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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24217519">Paper Flowers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnigmaOfShipwreckIsland/pseuds/EnigmaOfShipwreckIsland'>EnigmaOfShipwreckIsland</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Paper Flowers [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abduction, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Kidnapping, M/M, Major Original Character(s), Minor Character Death, Multi, Original Character Death(s), Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Why Did I Write This?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:06:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>28,639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24217519</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnigmaOfShipwreckIsland/pseuds/EnigmaOfShipwreckIsland</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Yuuri is abducted, Victor has to dig into his own troubled childhood to find him. What secrets lay buried in the past he'd rather forget? Will he find him in time?</p><p>*8/10 - Rating updated to "Explicit" and "Rape/Non-Con" warning had been added.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Katsuki Yuuri &amp; Yuri Plisetsky, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Victor Nikiforov &amp; Yuri Plisetsky, Yakov Feltsman &amp; Victor Nikiforov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Paper Flowers [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747969</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue - Twenty Years Ago</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Katerina Morozova was a beautiful woman, almost angelic. She was tall and had a perfect dancer’s posture. Her pale blonde hair was always tied back with a ribbon to match whatever color dress she wore that day. Like her equally beautiful son, she always wore a smile.<br/>
The last time she was seen alive, she wore a light blue dress with a white jacket. Coach Yakov Feltsman watched from the Sport Champions Club’s glass door as she fussed over her son’s clothes. Every morning, like clockwork, Katerina dropped Viktor off at the doors. Even if he didn’t have practice, the boy was there with his backpack and a healthy lunch. Mrs. Morozova almost never actually entered the building since Yakov started training her son. He had only spoken directly to her twice.<br/>
The first time was when they met, over a year before. During the off-season, the ice rink set a side one day a week to open-house events. It was both to look for potential new figure skaters and to transition the most senior skaters into coaches. Selling club-branded merchandise also helped raise funds for the upcoming season and spread interest in the rink, and figure skating in general.<br/>
While figure skating was popular, it seemed that less and less children were interested.<br/>
Yakov noticed Viktor Morozov during an open house at first because of his laughter. It was a bright, cheerful sound, like bells on a sleigh. When the coach looked, he saw the seven year old boy with flashing silver hair land a single toe loop. “Who is that?” he asked one of his senior skaters.<br/>
“Oh Viktor? That’s Morozova’s boy,” Anna replied causally as she nodded toward Katerina. It really was not necessary as she was the only woman with light hair in the building.<br/>
It took the rest of the day-long event for Yakov to convince Viktor’s mother to let him train her son. He was determined to train that boy for competition. He could see so much potential in that one jump. He knew his mother saw it and was proud of her son, yet she hesitated to agree. Finally, she filled the appropriate paperwork in his office, on the condition that her son could stay every day. Something about their home life being complicated. Yakov just assumed that she and her husband probably worked odd hours.<br/>
The second time was a week before that day. Katerina walked her son into the building one morning, stopping half the skaters training on the ice, asking to speak with their coach. In his office, she handed him a folder of papers along with a sealed envelope. “Can you hold on to these for me?” she asked in her soft voice.<br/>
They were all of Viktor’s paperwork. All of the boy’s official documents-from his birth certificate to a passport-were neatly organized in a manila folder. Victor Nikiforov’s papers.<br/>
“You changed his name,” Yakov stated. <em>Divorce</em>, he assumed. The poor boy’s parents were getting a divorce and his mother probably changed his name to her maiden name. That would explain the complicated home life she mentioned before.<br/>
Looking back, Yakov regretted not questioning it more. He wished he knew better. He noticed that both mother and son always had their arms covered, but thought maybe they were just naturally colder people. Sometimes, Victor had mysterious bruises that peeked out of his shirt’s long sleeves. He was a child though, and liked to attempt even higher level jumps than his already advanced level. There were times when a light touch to his side to adjust his position would make the young skater wince. The silver haired boy always were a smile, so no one thought anything of it.<br/>
Until that afternoon.<br/>
Yakov noticed that Victor was acting different that day. After saying bye to his mother, that smile looked more forced than usual. Victor looked tired and tied his skates much slower than usual as well. Yakov asked about it, but the boy only smiled and said that he was okay. He seemed alright once he set foot on the ice, though Yakov still kept an eye on him. He saw when the child fell out of a spin, landing on his side with a loud thud.<br/>
This wasn’t his first fall. Usually, Victor would easily pull himself off the ice with a laugh. With more maturity than even some of the senior skaters, he would brush himself off and try whatever he attempted before with his smile.<br/>
This time, Victor stayed laying on the cold surface, gasping for air, curled so tight his skates crossed.<br/>
At the hospital, Victor Nikiforov was diagnosed with a fractured rib and two more bruised ribs. The doctor determined, from the coloration of the skin, that the bruises occurred the night before. In fact, the child had multiple bruises on his arms. Defensive injuries. It took almost an hour for him to admit that they were from his father. That he made his father mad because he wanted to keep skating. Because he loved skating.<br/>
That night, after Victor took his pain medicine and fell asleep next to his coach on the couch, Yakov changed the channel on the TV to the news as he drank his vodka. He called Katerina when they got to his apartment to inform her that her son was staying the night and that they needed to have a meeting in the morning. He had so many questions that needed answers. How could she let that happen? How did she not protect her son? Was there worse happening that Victor might not even know about? Do they need help?<br/>
The top story of the night was a murder on the other side of Saint Petersburg. A man by the name of Ivan Morozov, who was already wanted for possible bratva-related crimes, was arrested for the shooting death of his wife, former junior figure skating champion Katerina Nikiforova. In the video of his arrest, the man shouted at the camera, his white hair shining in the camera flashes like his son’s. He blamed their son for making him shoot her. That it was his fault for talking so damn much. Then, his crazed eyes catching a camera lens, declared that, one day, he was going to find Victor and make him pay.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Vitya?” Yuuri called as he walked into the apartment’s living room, followed closely by Makkachin. He yawned into the back of his hand. He was wearing one of Victor’s sweaters over his jeans, and couldn’t hold back his smile as he smelled the other man on the cuff of the sleeve. One of the perks of doing laundry together was “accidentally” getting their clothes mixed up.</p><p>It was their first day off together in over a month, and Yuuri was already bored. They had a late breakfast together, then he went to work on his online course work in their bedroom while Victor worked on the Japanese app on his phone. Truthfully, Yuuri had put the sweater partly because he wanted Victor to see him wearing it as he got Makkachin ready for a walk. If the dog was walked at that time, the couple could have a few hours before figuring out dinner that could be spent entertaining each other.</p><p>So of course Victor was passed out.</p><p>Yuuri couldn’t help but to smile as he leaned on the back of the couch. Victor looked so relaxed. He needed the day off. Every day for the last month, the older man had been at the Sport Champions Club, either coaching him or training with Yakov. There were days when Yuuri literally had to drag him off the ice for lunch. If given the choice, Victor would have had stayed on the ice from the moment the rink opened until it closed for the night. Hell, Yuuri had to sneak behind his back to ask Yakov for the day off.</p><p>Reaching down, Yuuri brushed his silver bangs off his face. There was a time when he wouldn’t have even dreamed of moments like this. Yes, he always wanted to meet Victor Nikiforov, Russia’s Living Legend. He wanted to compete on the same ice as him, in hopes that some of that greatness might stick to his skates. If whoever was watching thought to bless him – or needed a good laugh – they may have even talked. Yuuri Katsuki was a dime-a-dozen skater, after all. What chance did he have of getting anything else?</p><p>Yuuri rested his chin on his arm, part of him still in disbelief that this was his life. The Japanese man could have spent the rest of eternity in that moment. Victor Nikiforov was nothing like how imagined. No, he was so much better. His Victor was everything he ever wanted and so much more. And Victor loved him. They had their lives together almost figured out. They already lived together, Yuuri’s belongings fitting in perfectly with Victor’s. The Russian man already called his parents “Otōsan” and “Okasan”, and they already accepted him as their son. Yakov was already shouting at Yuuri like one of his own students, which apparently counted as endearment? They even had power of attorney and final wills drawn up, just in case. The only issue was the actual marriage, which was still illegal in both their countries.</p><p>So, life was almost perfect.</p><p>As he stirred, Victor caught Yuuri’s hand in his own, his gold ring shining in the sunlight coming in from the windows behind the Asian man. His blue eyes opened slowly as he pressed that hand against his face. “Yuuri, your hand is cold.”</p><p>Suddenly, Yuuri went around the couch and pressed his forehead against the other man’s. “Vitya! You’re burning up!”</p><p>Victor did feel like crap. He had been feeling bad all morning, but he didn’t want Yuuri worrying. He hoped that, with his fiancé busy with his online class, he could get away with taking some cold medicine and sleeping it off. Ideally, he would wake up feeling mostly better without the other man suspecting anything was wrong. Seeing the concern in those big brown eyes, Victor knew that wasn’t the case. Still, he winked as he murmured, “Maybe it’s because you’re so hot.”</p><p>The both had to laugh, but then Victor started coughing. The gross mucus coughs that made them both glad they left the poodle tissue box in the living room. So much for afternoon love-making. It looked like it wasn’t happening that night either. As if knowing what Yuuri wanted, Victor leaned on his shoulder, nuzzling his face into his neck. “Yuuri, you look so good in my sweater.”</p><p>Yuuri wasn’t sure if he was blushing even more than usual because Victor’s face was so warm against his skin. “Vitya, you’re sick,” he stated as he pushed him back onto the couch, pulling the fluffy blanket back up to his waist. Since Yuuri moved in, they had amassed a large collection of soft fluffy blankets. The Japanese man was used to a much warmer climate. The blankets didn’t have to be fluffy, but Victor enjoyed seeing his fiancé wrapped in them. Especially in the mornings when the Asian man walked out of their bedroom wearing only that. He rarely used them without his fiancé next to him. In fact, this may have been his first time.</p><p>After tossing out the used tissues, Yuuri got his sick fiancé some cold medicine and a glass of water. “I’m going to take Makka for a walk.”</p><p>Victor nodded, quickly draining the glass. “I’ll go with you.”</p><p>The other man shook his head. “Rest! We’ll be back soon!”</p><p>There was something inside Victor that didn’t feel right about this. That he shouldn’t let Yuuri walk Makkachin without him. But then, his fiancé had lived with him for a wonderful three months. They walked the poodle together every afternoon. Yuuri knew Saint Petersburg well enough not to get lost. Figuring that he was just sick, Victor let him push him onto his back, purring, “Then you’ll nurse me back to health, right Katsuki-sensei?”</p><p>With a smile Yuuri kissed his forehead. He pulled another blanket on him, just to be safe. He still felt that Russia was unnaturally cold, even if Victor claimed that that spring was warmer than usual. Their noses touched as he tucked the sick man in. “I’ll make soup for dinner. Just stay here and rest! Doctor’s orders!”</p><p>Part of him wanted to get up after his family left. It was still such a sunny afternoon! It would be a waste to spend it laying on the couch shivering when he could sit at the window with a nice cup of warm tea. Maybe he should have asked Yuuri for the tea, but Makkachin was already starting to look impatient. Now that he was alone, Victor felt so sleepy….</p>
<hr/><p>“HEY! OLD SHIT!”</p><p>“Yurio?” Victor woke up to Yuri Plisetsky shouting in his face. Why was Yuri there? He sat up, rubbing his eyes as he looked around. When did it get so late? The windows were dark, rain tapping on the glass from the storm outside. There were no other sounds. Not Makkachin paws as he walked. Yuuri’s music wasn’t playing like it did while he cooked. No soup simmering on the stove. Just the rain and his phone vibrating. “Where’s Yuuri?”</p><p>Yuri watched as Victor coughed into one of the blankets piled on him. The man looked sick. His face was paler than usual. His usually neat silver hair was plastered to his forehead. He already looked as though he was ready to fall asleep again. Thank god Yuuri had given him a spare key! Otherwise, he may have still been banging on the door! “I’m calling Yakov.”</p><p>Soon, Yuri was letting Yakov in the door. The coach took one look at his eldest student and said “I told you this was too much, Vitya!”</p><p>Already sitting up, Victor smiled, but then started coughing. He tasted mucus in his mouth. Great. They were still in the middle of choreography! Yuuri could train on what they with Yakov if necessary, as the coach had been offering since the Japanese man started training there. He could catch up pretty quickly once he felt less stuffy. Then his eyes caught the folded blue led and collar in his coach’s hand. “Yakov, where’s Makkachin?”</p><p>Yakov sighed as he sat down next to Victor. He placed the items on his lap. “He got hit by a car outside the rink. I’m sorry, Vitya.”</p><p>Victor stared at Makkachin’s collar. Yuuri bought it for the poodle, customized with his name and both of their phone numbers. Yuuri! Yuuri was walking Makkachin! If Makkachin got hit by car, then… “Is Yuuri alright?”</p><p>Before Yakov could answer, Yuuri shouted from the kitchen, where he was searching the fridge for something to heat up, “Makkachin was alone!”</p><p>“Alone?” Victor repeated, reaching for his phone. That couldn’t be right! When he first moved in, Yuuri insisted in getting the lead for Makkachin! Even in Hasetsu, and what little traffic there was, he was nervous about walking the poodle without one. Also, Makkachin knew to not run into traffic. Something must have spooked Makkachin. Something must have happened to Yuuri. Victor was surprised, and relieved, to see that Yuuri was calling him. The now-bittersweet image of him playing with Makkachin on the beach last summer filled the screen. “Yuuri! Where are you?”</p><p>“I don’t know!” Yuuri whispered into the phone, barely audible over the sounds around him. It sounded like he was in a car going very fast. He was taking the short, shakey breaths Victor knew were from his panic attacks. “I don’t know what happened! He just grabbed me!” Then he gasped as the background noise started to get quieter. “Vitya! Hang up!”</p><p>“Yuuri, why do you want me to-” “Because I can’t!”</p><p>Yuuri cried into the phone. He gasped when what something unlatched and a door creaked open. There was a loud punch, then nothing. “Yuuri?” Victor sat up straighter, momentarily dizzy from the sudden movement. “What just happened? Yuuri!”</p><p>Instead, another voice purred, “Hello Vitya. It’s been so long!”</p><p>Victor thought he was going to be sick. There was no way. How could he have found them? His address was private. All of his mail went directly to Yakov’s office at the rink, across town. Even his online orders-as embarrassing as some of them were-went to his coach first. Other than walks with Makkachin, and later with Yuuri, he rarely went out after returning from practice. If he did, he stayed at various hotels under fake names. He’d had a string of one-night stands and relationships that never lasted because he refused to bring them home.</p><p>But then he met Yuuri. All of Yuuri’s things were shipped directly to their apartment. They went grocery shopping at least once a week. After practice on nights before their days off, they went out with Mila and Georgi and came home so late it may have been considered early. They ate out at restaurants often enough to have favorites and danced at certain clubs enough for them to stop check Yuuri’s id with every drink. In the bliss of finding someone to spend the rest of his life with, Victor had forgotten all of the precautions he’d lived with for fifteen years.</p><p>All so that this person wouldn’t find him. “Hello father.”</p><p>Ivan Morozov stood at the entrance of a dirt road, looking up at the broken streetlight. He pressed his phone against his ear with his shoulder as he lit his cigarette. The flame from the cheap plastic lighter momentarily illuminated his now shaggy white hair under his dark hood. He smirked as he said, “And here I thought my famous son forgot all about me!”</p><p>Victor watched Yakov stand next to him, signaling for Yuri to stop whatever he was doing. “I want to talk to Yuuri.” “I’d let you but,” he started as he looked down his rusty car’s trunk, his smirk slipping into a grin as he stared at unconscious Yuuri Katsuki start to stir and pull against the ropes that tied his wrists behind his back, “he’s a little tied up at the moment.”</p><p>Victor cringed at the sound of his father’s laughter. He knew, from videos of himself, that he had the same laugh. He held the phone in both of his hands to try to keep them from shaking. “Please, don’t hurt-”</p><p>“Vitya, I did say I’d make you pay,” he said before ending the call. He frowned when he saw the wallpaper image of the two skaters in their exhibition costumes, wrapped in each other's arms as they kissed on the ice. Angry, he threw it into the woods. He looked down at the Asian man one more time before slamming the trunk door shut.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I got a bit of fluff in! </p><p>_(._.)_ I’m sorry about Makkachin</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>It had been years since Victor stepped into that warm kitchen. It was the only thing he missed of his parents’ house. The rest of it was tied to bad memories of shouting and bruises, things he’d rather forget. He had Yakov help him sell the house to get rid of those memories. Everything he kept of that place fit in a cardboard documents box in the back of his closet. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>His mother stood in the wood-paneled kitchen, humming to herself as she pulled the almond scented cookies out of the oven. She smiled over her shoulder at him. She looked almost exactly as Victor remembered. Her long light blonde hair was loose and reached down to her waist, a style that he copied during his junior years. She wore a lose cardigan over her dress, which he knew was to hide her own bruises as his clothes hid his. “How was practice, Vitya?” she asked in English, as she gestured toward a plate of cookies on the table behind her. It was their secret. They only used English when Victor’s father wasn’t home. English meant they were safe. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Next to the plate was a chipped vase with two white paper lilies and a pair of blue-framed glasses with shattered lenses.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> “It was good,” Victor replied as he bit into a cookie. It was crumbly with bits of almond. Powdered sugar caked onto his fingertips. Exactly how he remembered. He had tried making them before, but they never came out right. Maybe it was because he only tried when he was depressed and missing her.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> “That’s good,” Katerina said as she started preparing another batch. She scooped a tablespoon of dough, rolled it into a ball, then placed it on another tray. She did it slowly so her son could watch. She knew he liked to watch. “And how’s Yuuri doing?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> “Yuuri?” Victor asked mid-bite. Why was his mother asking about Yuuri? Why was she humming Stammi Vicino? There was no way she could know about either of those. “Mom, how do you know about Yuuri?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> When his mother finally turned to face him, Victor saw that the front of her violet dress was covered in dark red blood from the wound in the middle of her chest. “Because your father picked him up yesterday.” </em>
</p>
<p>Victor woke up in his old room in Yakov’s apartment with a cold compress on his forehead. He pulled the blanket tighter, feeling unusually chilly. He was the type that wore as little to bed as possible. Finding himself fully clothed - in sherpa-lined pajamas and socks - shivering under a thick blanket was very concerning. He had been feeling sick, but not that bad!</p>
<p>It took him a minute to fully process that he was in Yakov’s apartment and not his own. That, for whatever reason, Yuuri was not wrapped in his arms. Makkachin was not there demanding a walk. At first, the silver haired man wondered if they got into a fight, but couldn’t remember what they would have fought about. They were both off the day before, so there was nothing they really could have gotten that upset with each other over, right? And even if they did get into a fight, there was no way he was leaving Makkachin!</p>
<p>
  <em>“Hello Vitya.” </em>
</p>
<p>The memory of his father’s voice on the phone fully awoke him. He sat up in the bed, still clutching the blanket in his hands. His father took Yuuri while walking Makkachin. Spooked by the abduction, Makkachin ran to the closest familiar place, the ice rink, and was hit by a car. Yakov brought him to his apartment for the night, not trusting Victor alone with all that piled on top of his cold.</p>
<p>Yakov knew better than anyone. Not even Yuuri knew about Victor’s bad days. While he had not seen his father in twenty years, the memories lingered like a scab. Not quite a scar, which would eventually fade. A scab that occasionally broke open at unexpected times, leading to “bad days”. Some days, he sat in bed zoned out for so long that he wouldn’t realize the day had passed him by until his coach found him. That was part of the reason why he got Makkachin. Having to take care of a dog prevented up from zoning out as bad. He still had those days, though not as frequently. In fact, he hadn’t had a single one of those days since he flew to Japan to find Yuuri. Both Makkachin and Yuuri distracted him enough.</p>
<p>Both of them suddenly disappearing from his life was like drowning, his mind flooded with the echo of his father’s voice speaking and laughing. Echoing over and over again, spiraling around his head in an endless cycle.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Hello Vitya.” “It’s been so long!” “And here I thought my famous son forgot all about me!” “I’d let you, but he’s a little tied up at the moment.” “Vitya, I did say I’d make you pay.” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Vitya, I did say I’d make you pay.” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“I did say I’d make you pay.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> “I’d make you pay.” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Make you pay.”</em>
</p>
<p>“Hello? Victor?”</p>
<p>Yuri had been surprised when he walked by the guest bedroom and caught Victor just sitting there, staring at the wall ahead of him. He may have just walked by, because fevers sometimes make people act strange, if he didn’t see the tears trickling down the older skater’s cheeks. He called his name several times before Victor finally turned. Even then, he didn’t look as though he was completely there.</p>
<p>Suddenly, Victor gave a weak smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Morning, Yurio.”</p>
<p>Yuri had to stop himself from snapping at his rink mate. “Yakov said to make sure you eat with your medicine.”</p>
<p>Next to the bedroom door was that documents box. The white cardboard had scuff marks and the corners were smushed from being moved so much. The name Viktor Morozov was barely visible under the various shades of black scribbles. Ever since that day, especially if he was stressed, Victor would grab a permanent marker and add more lines to that name. That was not his name, after all. That was the name his father forced on him. Victor Nikiforov was the his mother gave him, allowing him the freedom to pursue his dreams without that shadow looming over him.</p>
<p>Inside the box was a collection of medals in their own display boxes, a yellowed newspaper, and a stack of framed pictures. The first photo on the stack was of Katerina in that kitchen, smiling at whoever was holding the camera with flour in her braided hair and a hand rested on her swollen belly. The wall behind her was yellow, not the dark wood from Victor’s dream. He knew he remembered that bright yellow, yet the dark wood seemed so familiar too.</p>
<p>Why did it seem so familiar?</p>
<p>Victor stared at the woman in the photo. He knew she had just turned nineteen this image, already retired from figure skating. According to her press release, Katerina Nikiforova officially retired from competitive skating at fifteen simply because she lost interest. There were rumors that her fiancé pressured her into ending her career. How else could the junior world champion lose interest just before advancing to the senior ranks? Though it wasn’t uncommon for juniors to drop out at that point, either for their families or education, the gold medalists usually choose to keep pushing forward. Victor did.</p>
<p>But then, he did almost retire after becoming the five time world champion for a man he met once.</p><hr/>
<p>Yuuri awoke to a sudden rush of freezing air. He instinctively tried to pull his arms around himself, only to find them still tied behind his back. He pulled more frantically, feeling the rough rope dig into his wrists. He had no idea how long he had been there. He stopped when he heard laughing, shooting a glare over his shoulder.</p>
<p>The man standing there with one hand still on the trunk door looked so much like Victor that Yuuri thought he was going to be sick. He probably would have been sick if there was anything in his stomach. He suddenly grabbed Yuuri’s arms and roughly yanked him out, nearly throwing him. “Let’s go!” he growled as he pulled the skater down the dirt path to the shack.</p>
<p>The wooden shack sat alone, surrounded by dirt and a few scattered trees. Lined patches of dirt on either side of the door were all that remained of what must have been a garden. Every window was boarded up, the glass shattered long ago. Shingles were falling off the roof. Beyond the run down building was a large body of water, dark water crashing against the large rocks that protected the property.</p>
<p>The inside was dark and dusty. The walls were covered in dark wood paneling. The air smelled like frost and stale cigarette smoke. Yuuri was pushed past a small kitchen table, stumbling on his own feet before falling to the hard floor. He managed to get himself up to one knee as he turned, to find the Victor-look-a-like pointing a gun at him. “Who are you?” he hissed, surprising even himself.</p>
<p>The man smirked, looking exactly like Victor when he demonstrated the Eros short program the year before. He hooked a chair with his foot and pulled over to sit. He placed the gun on the table next to a chipped vase, still pointed at Yuuri, as he lit a cigarette. He watched the Asian man as he took a long drag, before saying, “I don’t suppose my son would have told you about me.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*I was going to write Victor’s mother as someone who is either cold or indifferent toward her son, but then I found the name Katerina and thought dresses and fresh-baked cookies.<br/>*She made Russian tea cakes with almonds because that's how I make them.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sky was just starting to lighten as Victor walked through the cemetery. He used to come here after every major competition before picking up Makkachin from the dog sitter. It was a good place to decompress after spending up to a week playing Russia’s Living Legend. Anyone awake at that hour knew better than to intrude on this private time.</p>
<p>The last time he visited his mother’s grave was over a year ago, after winning his fifth gold medal at Worlds. As he arranged the flowers and the dog plushie he brought for her, he told her everything. He talked about Worlds and his competitors. He talked about being disappointed that Japan’s Yuuri Katsuki wasn’t there. He talked about how strange this win had felt. Yes, he was proud that his hard work paid off. Yes, he felt he deserved it. There was something missing though. He needed help figuring out what that was.</p>
<p>That afternoon, Victor found the video of Yuuri skating Stammi Vicino, and saw it as a sign.</p>
<p>Despite the pain in his chest that made him want to stay in bed, he got up early to ask his mother for another sign. She helped him find Yuuri the first time. Maybe she could help again? He knew it was unlikely, but he’d already gone through the box from the house multiple times. He went through the old backpack he found in Yakov’s attic. He even went through his file in his coach’s office, surprised to find that he house was never sold (another problem for another day).</p>
<p>At least this visit felt productive. While his stamina was infamously bad, this cold left him mostly wiped. Between the constant shivering and coughing so hard his next breath came in gasps, Victor barely had the energy to microwave the cups of soup Yakov stocked his cabinets with. He even moved a chair to the counter to the kitchen to eat and take his cold medicine right there.</p>
<p>And then Victor saw the paper flowers in front of his mother’s headstone.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Aren’t they beautiful!” Katerina said as she held the bouquet of carefully folded paper flowers in front of her son. They were beautiful, full of different colors and patterns. Roses, daisies, tulips, lilies, even flowers that the six year old could not recognize, in pink, blue, white, newsprint, yellow legal paper, printer paper, notebook paper. All tied together with a new red ribbon. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>They were almost pretty enough to distract from the dark bruises on his mother’s arms. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Katerina smiled her heart-shaped smile as she held them close to her chest, like they were the most precious thing in the world. “Your father made them for me.” </em>
</p>
<p>Victor picked up the paper flowers. His hand shook as he examined the bouquet. It was mostly newsprint, though still the same folded flowers. He wanted to crumble them. He wanted to destroy them. He wanted to watch them burn. How dare his father come here! How dare he try to give her anything after what he did to her, to both of them. Victor felt the twisted paper steams bend under his fingers as his fist tightened, but then he stopped. His mother always loved the paper flowers. She would say that, with the proper care, they would stay beautiful forever. That the love she and his father had for each other was the same. Their relation had some imperfections, like the odd combination of mismatched papers, but those were still part of a beautiful creation.</p>
<p>Victor wondered how much of their relationship was as fake as those apology gifts.</p>
<p>After a deep breath, which resulted in a few coughs, Victor returned the flowers to the grave and added his own bouquet of real white and pink roses. Still kneeling, he rested his forehead against the cold stone, his fingers touching the engraving of his mother’s name. “Mom…father took Yuuri from me,” he whispered in English, as always, “I need to find him.”</p>
<p>His phone vibrated in his pocket. Someone was calling, likely Yakov trying to check on him. Victor stuck his hand into the jacket pocket to reject the call. He could easily say he was doing exactly what he coach told him to do by getting his rest. When his fingers brushed against the crumbled grocery store receipt, it hit him. The paper flowers! His father always made them out of whatever paper he had on hand. Perhaps there were receipts in that bouquet.</p><hr/>
<p>Victor knew that Yakov knew he was lying about feeling better. He hoped that his coach couldn’t tell how bad he felt. He walked in already tired, claiming that the coffee he brought with him hadn’t kicked in yet. He decided that it was best not to mention that it was his third cup of the day.</p>
<p>Truthfully, he probably should have just gone home. Even though he brought his workout bag with him to the cemetery out of habit, a part of him was tempted to skip practice. The adrenaline rush from finding his father’s bouquet gave him the jolt of energy needed to convince him that he should get some training in. Even if he had to leave early, it was better than not coming at all.</p>
<p>Yuuri would want him to train if he could. This was their world. Their lives revolved around competitions and training for competitions. Yuuri wouldn’t want Victor’s life to stop just because he wasn’t there. Even if he would probably have to withdraw both of them from the Grand Prix series soon. Probably. Victor was not completely convinced that he wouldn’t find Yuuri in time to prepare for the season. Sure, it would likely mean some long days at the rink and simplifying the programs a little for their first events, but they could do it. They could perform the originally choreographed versions at the finals.</p>
<p><em>‘Assuming Yuuri wasn’t hurt.’</em> Victor thought suddenly as he started a step sequence. The whole time, he assumed that his father wouldn’t do anything to his fiancé. There was no reason for Ivan to hurt him, after all. Except he had no real reason to hit him and his mother either, and he did. And now he had Yuuri alone somewhere.</p>
<p>Yuri stopped in the middle of the step sequence Katsuki helped him choreograph, watching older skater stare at the ice. Apparently, Victor was unaware of the fact that he looked like shit. He already looked like he’d lost some weight, his pale skin looking slightly more sunken. His silver hair laid limply on his sweaty forehead. He moved way slower than usual. And now he was zoning out in the middle of his training, like his fiancé.</p>
<p>Then he saw Victor flub his quad flip. “Getting old, Victor!” He shouted jokingly. Then he saw the other skater coughing on his knees. He watched as the silver haired man struggled to stop coughing, every inhale only making it worse.</p>
<p>Yakov ran out of his office at the sound of that coughing. Seeing Victor Nikiforov crouched down on the ice shocked him. It had been twenty years since that day, yet every time one of his skaters failed to get back up, his mind flashed to that day. The memories of that day haunted him. Just as he was about to call for an ambulance, Victor finally managed a loud shaky gasp as his coughing stopped. He watched as his oldest skater rose from the ice with Yuri’s support. He waited until Victor was sitting on a bench before pressing his hand on his forehead, ignoring when he leaned into it. The champion figure skater was burning up. “Yuri! Get Victor’s shoes and jacket! NOW!”</p>
<p>On the way to the hospital, Victor fell asleep again with his head against the window. His coughing and quiet wheezing in the passenger seat brought Yakov back to that day. He remembered driving the eight year old to the same hospital, listening to him quietly cry between painful sounding gasps. The skater’s face almost looked the same, pale and sweaty. He couldn’t help reaching over and squeezing his hand, as he did that day.</p>
<p>
  <em> “My father,” Eight year old Victor mumbled through his tears on the hospital examination table. His coach didn’t know how to comfort him beyond holding his hand. The child only wore a loose medical gown. His exposed arms and legs were spotted with various colored bruises, though none nearly as large as the one hidden on his side. “I…he wants me to quit skating, but I love skating. That made him mad so he…he h-hit me and I fell. So he...he kicked me, and kicked me again and again….” </em>
</p>
<p>“Coach?” Yakov glanced over at the adult sitting next to him. The silver haired man didn’t look any more awake than he had been a minute ago. He would have thought he imagined Victor calling him if the skater didn’t squeeze his hand back.</p>
<p>“Yes, Vitya?”</p>
<p>“Thank you for being here for me.” His voice was soft, weaker than Yakov liked hearing.</p>
<p>“I’m your coach.”</p>
<p>Victor gave a weak nod, his forehead squeaking on the glass. “You’re always here for me. Even when you weren’t my coach, you were there for Yuuri. Thank you.”</p>
<p>“You are not dying, Vitya.”</p>
<p>There was a sleepy chuckle, followed by a cough. “Did you call Yuuri yet?”</p>
<p>It didn’t matter what Yakov’s answer would have been, because Victor fell asleep again, his hand loosening around his. The coach didn’t know how to answer. Just like that day twenty years before, he didn’t know how to comfort him. So, Yakov simply held Victor’s hand while once again wishing for Ivan Morozov’s death.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry about the delay. Due to recent events, I decided to completely rewrite this chapter. There may be delays with the next few chapters, so be sure to subscribe! </p>
<p>Also kudos are nice ^_^</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yuri stood in front of a locker labeled <em>NIKIFOROV</em>. Each skater was assigned a locker that they could leave thing in all year around if they needed. There was a rumor that it was inspired by a child whose parent tried to beat them out of skating. No one knew any details beyond that. No one was even sure if that story was true. The only people who have been there long enough to know would be the older coaches, and maybe Victor. But then, Victor was so forgetful that it seemed unlikely he’d even remember.</p>
<p>The athletes tended to only leave their shampoo and body wash in their lockers. They preferred to take their gear home after practice to clean and inspect for damage alone. He knew Victor still had a collection of hair ties and ribbons hanging on a hook in his locker. The older skater told him plenty of times to grab one if he needed it, and at that moment he did. He didn’t want to open the locker again though.</p>
<p>He didn’t want to see Yuuri’s yoga mat again.</p>
<p>The couple tended to start training early, usually arriving even before Yakov and Lilia. Without the two instructors, the couple had no access to the dance studio, so they ended up buying a yoga mat so Yuuri could do barre exercises rink side without damaging his feet on the concrete floor. Apparently, the Japanese skater saw that it was on clearance at a sports store and bought it without looking at the design. Victor – the ass he was – decided to take a video of Yuuri unrolling it the first time without warning him. In the video, the younger skater’s face flushed almost as pink as the blown up photo of cherry blossoms on the yoga mat. Everyone had gotten used to seeing that mat every morning after a week. They actually kind of liked it. The light pink flower design added some much needed softness to the otherwise stiff appearance of the rink. It got to the point where the skate team started to consider buying some fake flowers to decorate one day before Yakov could stop them.</p>
<p>
  <em>“No paper flowers,” Victor stated firmly. For a moment, their carefree rink mate was replaced by someone colder than ice. It scared the other three skaters into silence. Even when his usual smile did return, it didn’t warm those blue eyes until Yuuri walked out of the locker room for them to leave. </em>
</p>
<p>If Victor was so against paper flowers, why did he have a bouquet of them in his locker?</p>
<p>Yuri walked out of the locker room and was in the middle of tying up his hair when he saw them. “What do you assholes want?”</p><hr/>
<p>Yakov’ watched through a window as Victor laying in a hospital bed, finally asleep, thanks in part to the strong medication flowing through IV sticking out of his arm. He couldn’t just catch a cold, take some over-the-counter medicine, and be done with it. No. Victor Nikiforov had to catch pneumonia. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with. They hadn’t even talked about how reporting Yuuri’s Katsuki’s disappearance went.</p>
<p>It was strange that there was no mention of it in the media though. Surely it should have leaked by now.</p>
<p>Suddenly, Yakov felt his phone vibrating. It was a call from Hasetsu, Japan. Strange, why would anyone from Katsuki’s home town be calling him? “Feltsman.”</p>
<p>“Hello. This is Minako Okukawa,” the woman on the other end said. “I’m-”</p>
<p>“Katsuki’s ballet instructor. I know.” Yuuri was very proud of her. He credited her with the gracefulness of his strengths. Victor also mentioned that she made the best cocktails he’s ever tasted.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry to call you like this, but Yuuri and Victor aren’t answering anyones’ calls.”</p>
<p>Yakov took a deep breath, resting his forehead in his free hand as he took a deep breath, half expecting the rest of his hair to fall out at that exact moment. Of course they hadn’t talked about how reporting Yuuri’s disappearance went. Victor hadn’t reported him missing yet. It had been over a week. This was going to look bad. “I need his parents’ phone number.”</p>
<p>Then he saw the police officers talking to the receptionist, who pointed in his direction. Yeah. This was going to look really bad.</p><hr/>
<p>Yuuri Katsuki blinked as he awoke laying on his side on the hardwood floor. Just a moment before, he had been back in his apartment. The steam rising from the large pot was filled with the delicate scent of the miso soup he was making for Victor, who rested his head on his shoulder with his arms around his waist. Yuri complained about them being gross as he sat on their couch with Makkachin draped across his lap. The classic rock playlist Phichit made for them in college played in the background. It was warm and safe. Instead of the miso broth, all Yuuri tasted was his own blood in his mouth.</p>
<p>“Ah. You decided to come back to the party,” Ivan mused loudly, kicking Yuuri over with his steel-toe boot. He then pressed the shoe into his side, grinning as he watched the other man writhe in pain. He knew damn well his ribs were likely bruised. He gave his own son the same injury twenty years before. “Are you going to tell me my son’s address or not?”</p>
<p>It surprised even Yuuri how stubbornly he was glaring at this man as he bit back his pain. Victor’s father. In the dimly lit room, he looked so much like his fiancé that it sent a chill down his spine, yet that glare never wavered. He was determined to protect Victor with everything he had. Even if he could barely open one eye. Even if his lungs stung with every breath. Even if every waking moment was spent with this man.</p>
<p>Even if it killed him.</p><hr/>
<p>Later that night, Ivan walks into a local bar. As usual for that time, it’s quiet. Only the regulars who practically lived there remained, along with the bar’s owner. She smiles when she sees him, holding her brown hair back as she leans over the counter to kiss him. “Where have you been?”</p>
<p>“Sorry Soph,” Ivan said as he pulled up his usual stool at the counter. He was barely settled in his seat before two shot glasses appeared before him. He waited until Sophia picked hers back up before taking his. Drinking, his eyes caught the evening newspaper laying on the counter next to a glass bottle filled with paper flowers.</p>
<p>[IMAGE: Yuuri Katsuki on the Grand Prix Finals podium with his silver medal]</p>
<p>
  <strong>YUURI KATSUKI OF JAPAN MISSING, VICTOR NIKIFOROV, YURI PLISETSKY, YAKOV FELTSMAN SUSPECTS IN DISAPPEARANCE </strong>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>(Saint Petersburg, Russia) - Japanese figure skater, Yuuri Katsuki (24), was reported missing to Saint Petersburg police this morning by former coach, Celestino Cialdini. According to multiple sources, he called after being informed that Thai figure skater, Phichit Chulanont, had used the Find Friends app to locate the Grand Prix Finals silver medalist phone in Lake Ladoga. Based on water damage, the phone had been submerged for at least one week. Neighbors to the Katsuki/ Nikiforov apartment confirm that Katsuki had not been seen in that time period. Witnesses say that the night Katsuki disappeared, Nikiforov was seen leaving their shared apartment for the weekend with his coach, Yakov Feltsman, and fellow rink mate, Yuri Plisetsky. All three failed to inform local authorities that Katsuki (continued MISSING on A13)</p>
</blockquote>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This chapter…this chapter has been a mess. This fic is a mess. Because my dumbass rewrote the previous chapter, I now have to rewrite the next few chapters (and I was working on the last chapter of this and the first chapter of Part 2). With the prologue and epilogue, this was going to be 13 chapters (hence A13), but I may have changed that.</p>
<p>I have had almost Yuuri-short hair (though it’s grown out a bit now thanks to the coronavirus) for a while now, but I still keep a small collection of hair ties. Old habits. I can image Victor having a hard time breaking that habit since he probably needed them waaay more than I did.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>***This Chapter Contains Graphic Violence***</p><p>Also I'm debating if I should up the rating for future chapters. I wrote the ending, but just not exactly sure how I'm going to get there.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wherever this place was was absolutely silent when Yuuri was left alone. There was no wildlife. No neighbors. The only car he usually heard was Ivan’s, relaxing when the car’s engine grew quieter as he drove away and tensing when he heard it grow louder as he returned. Some nights, the Russian man had people over, and they would shout at each other for hours. Despite the loud voices making him nervous in his corner of the small room, he preferred them.</p><p>Those nights, the door stayed locked.</p><p>This was not one of those nights.</p><p>Yuuri had already pushed himself into the farthest corner from the door when he only heard one car door slam shut. It was going to be a bad night. He could hear the other man cursing as soon as the front door opened. Those heavy footsteps made Yuuri crouch into as tight a ball as he could with his scabbed arms still tied behind his back, his eyes never leaving the bottom of the door. Then the light appeared. Then the dark boots. Keys jingled as the key was slid into the lock, soft clicking, then the door creaked open.</p><p>Ivan stood in the doorway for a moment with an old camping lantern in one hand. The keys flashed in the light as they went back into his pants pocket. The moment he found Yuuri, Ivan stormed to him, lifted him by the stretched-out collar of his now sleeveless sweater, and slammed him against the wall.</p><p>Yuuri felt the now familiar knife against his throat, the sharp blade already breaking his skin.</p><p>“You think this is funny?” Ivan practically growled, his face just inches from Yuuri’s. So close that Yuuri could almost taste the vodka on the other man’s breath. Not that the man didn’t always return smelling like vodka, which inspired him to give him the address to a bar in Saint Petersburg. How he managed to remember that much information with that knife cutting into his arms, he’ll never know. The knife slid from Yuuri’s throat, leaving a cut that he knew wasn’t as deep as the sting made it feel. He didn’t fully process this though until he was thrown to the floor face first.</p><p>Dazed from the impact, Yuuri didn’t move when Ivan stepped on his back as he kneeled like a hunter over his prize. Then the knife sliced the back of the sweater open, the blade catching his skin a few times as it went down his spine. Yuuri tried his best to not to move, but couldn’t help flinching as the metal tip broke his skin. Ivan was silent as he threw the ripped fabric open. He traced the new angry red scratch with a dirty finger, watching as the man under him flinched when the open cuts were touched. Then, he leaned down to his ear, pressing his hand on a particularly large wound. He grinned at the gasp he received when he pulled Yuuri’s head back by his hair. “Now do we feel like talking?”</p><p>Yuuri felt the tears escape his eyes as he glared.</p><p>Ivan said as he sat back up. This time, he straddled Yuuri’s lower back as he rested his free hand on his neck. Then he started cutting. He made sure to press the knife just enough to draw blood, but not too much. No. He wanted to keep the squirming man conscious as long as possible. The longer he was awake for the pain, the more likely he was to talk. That didn’t mean he couldn’t have fun. He watched every new line fill and leak red with blood, giving Yuuri just enough time to start calming and possibly start to talk, before slashing again. Sometimes, he used his dirty knuckles to smear the blood just to hear that pained cry. A couple of times, he tilted the knife and pulled it down toward him, slowly slicing away a patch of skin like a deli meat slicer, listening as that quiet whine stretched into a near scream.</p><p>Until he broke, Ivan intended to have as much fun as possible.</p>
<hr/><p>Victor set the knife down on the counter, very proud of the lunch he’d prepared for himself and Yuri. Between having the correct medication and the energy drinks the teenager brought over to drink while “babysitting a grown ass man”, Victor felt…better. He vaguely remembered the last couple of weeks, but memory was never really his strong suit so that didn’t bother him much. “Yura! Lunch!” Victor announced, more forcefully than he meant.</p><p>“Finally!” Yuri shouted from the living, where he was playing some violent sounding video game. Both of them had “voluntarily withdrawn” from the 2016-2017 Grand Prix Series. Truthfully, they’d only pulled out because it looked better than being suspended. Still, Yuri was pissed at their coach since that announcement and had been crashing on the couch. At least the teenager also made him soup and kept track of his medicine schedule.</p><p>Not that he was ungrateful, but if Victor had one more bowl of instant miso, borshch, or shchi. he might scream.</p><p>Yuri stood at the counter, staring at the plates and bowls for a moment. “What the fuck, old man?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Grilled cheese and tomato soup?” He ignored Victor’s proud nod as grabbed one of each before making his way to the table. He also ignored the can on the counter, only hoping that this was not an expired soup. He had seen the cans of tomato soup a few times, but assumed it was Yuuri’s. The Japanese man had lived in the US for five years. Maybe it was one of those things he picked up while in Detroit, like the pole dancing and the need to have coffee every afternoon.</p><p>Apparently not.</p><p>They ate in silence as Victor scrolled through his the notifications on his phone, wondering if a phone could max out on number of notifications and how close he was to that number. None of it was good. It seemed as though everyone on every social media format was talking about Yuuri’s disappearance, and how suspicious it was that he had not reported it. Apparently, that was enough proof to convince the public that he had something to do with Yuuri vanishing. #VictorNikiforovIsGulity and #VictuuriIsDead trending, along with photos of them during their…rougher patches. Yuuri with red eyes at the Cup of China. The two of them in the holding area before Yuuri’s free skate in Barcelona. Their occasional bad day in Saint Petersburg where they purposely ignored each other. Any photo in the past year where Yuuri looked even slightly unhappy was called into question.</p><p>The story that was spreading like wildfire online was that this was Victor’s plan from the beginning. To lure the oblivious Yuuri Katsuki into Saint Petersburg, far away from anything he knew, then have him vanish. Some were even suggesting that Victor Nikiforov was part of the bratva. Because apparently figure skating in glittery costumes and cuddling with fluffy poodles screams “mafia”?</p><p>Suddenly, Yuri snatched the phone out of the older man’s hand. “You’re not supposed to look at that shit,” he snapped as he put it face down on his other side. Yakov had given them orders not to look at the gossip. The teenager had notifications turned off on all of his social media apps since the Grand Prix Finals, after the Angels tagged him in so many screenshots of him on the podium that the alerts were killing his phone’s battery. Victor had yet to do the same.</p><p>Yuri picked the phone up again. He tried typing Victor’s birthdate to unlock the phone. That didn’t work. Rolling his eyes, he tried Yuuri’s birthdate. That also did not work. He tried every date that was relevant to Victor Nikiforov. His Junior debut? No. His Senior debut? No. His first World Championship? No. His fifth? No. Sochi Grand Prix? No. He even tried the day the couple got engaged, eyes rolling again. Nothing. The six digits had to be an important date, right? Finally, he asked, “what’s your passcode?”</p><p>“0-8-0-9-6-7”, Victor replied as he finished the first half of his sandwich.</p><p>“As in September 8, 1967?” Yuri didn’t mean to say that out loud. It was just such an odd date for Victor to use. This was the same Victor that had a calendar on the wall in every room with every birthday, including his own, marked. That date was even before he was born. How was it relevant to-</p><p>“Mom’s birthdate. Actually August 9th. Mom always wrote dates the American way,” Victor explained, looking down at his lunch. Another thing from his mother. She always made grilled cheese and tomato soup when he was sick, always cutting the sandwich diagonally. As strange as it was, Victor always kept at least one can on hand at all times. He even brought a case to Hasetsu,(which thankfully none of the Katsukis questioned). Unlike the Russian soups, this simple canned soup reminded him of his childhood. Of being held in his mother’s arms. Of being tucked into his warm bed while being told fairy tales….</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It’s been over a month already! I’m so sorry for the delay! I’ve been distracted with Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (I wrote a one shot if you’re interested) and Hetalia (like, instead of music, I have the sound of Italy saying “Germany!” on repeat in my head. I will say it is an improvement from “CaramellDansen" like the last two chapters). Also, this chapter was so hard to figure out. I have at least three different versions of this chapter. I literally just rewrote the second half of this version. </p><p>Please don't hate me for hurting Yuuri. I already feel bad.</p><p>Be sure to check out my profile! I post announcements there!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I decided on an early update because my schedule next week is looking pretty busy. And also because I (somehow) have this and the next chapter finished ＼(^o^)／</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Victor stood in the locker room, straightening his suit in front of the mirror. He was careful to only look at his body’s reflection and not peek through his bangs at his face. At the more pronounced than usual cheekbones from his weight loss. At the bags under his eyes, still bloodshot from crying in bed just an hour before. None of the usual sounds were present. No one else was there to talk and make jokes as they got ready for practice. No one was taking an end-of-super-early-practice shower. The constant drip of the shower head at the far end of the space did nothing to calm Victor’s nerves. If anything, it felt almost like the ticking of the clock.</p><p>Drip</p><p>Drip</p><p>Drip</p><p>Counting the moments wasted. They already lost so much precious time with Victor’s pneumonia. Hell, he still had that cough, minor chest pain, and chills. His temperature was still a touch over 38 degrees. Technically, he wasn’t even supposed to leave his apartment for another couple days. He needed to do this though. They had to find Yuuri.</p><p>And the first step was this press conference.</p><p>He couldn’t remember ever being this nervous about a press conference. He had been talking to reporters in front of cameras for most of his career. He just needed to relax and remain as calm as possible. Except he had no idea what to expect. This was not about an upcoming competition or a new gold medal. If anything, this could have been considered the performance itself, and he knew the majority of the audience was against him.</p><p>His recent social media silence on top of everything did not help his case.</p><p>Victor paused, staring at his right hand as it touched Yuuri’s light blue tie. He hated this tie, and yet he would not have worn any other for this. It was Yuuri’s favorite. When he lifted one end to his nose, it still smelled like Yuuri with a hint of the champagne from the Sochi banquet. Everyone that followed his fiancé for the last few years would recognize it. At the very least, Coach Yakov agreed that it was a good choice for the image.</p><p>Then Victor remembered the cat scratches on his hand. The scabs did nothing to help his official roles as the “best friend”, “roommate”, or “concerned coach.” “Fellow competitor” seemed to fit it better. “Accomplice” or “perpetrator” matched even better. He’d read that book, watched that movie. He knew how it looked. Victor was bigger than Yuuri, especially when they were in performance shape. He could very easily lift the Japanese man. Everyone had seen him do so during Yuuri's Grand Prix Exhibition. Even he knew it wasn’t that hard to think that he may have overpowered him, resulting in those scabs instead of simply trying to rub a Potya’s belly.</p><p>“Vitya! We don’t have all day!” the coach shouted into the locker room. Before leaving, Victor kissed the gold ring on his finger. He didn’t pray often. The last time was likely when he had to fly back to Hasetsu for Makkachin. Before that…was probably his last night in his parents’ home. He took a moment now to send a prayer of strength to Yuuri, hoping that it will reach.</p>
<hr/><p>“You’re early, Vanya!” Sophia shouted as Ivan walked in the door. She already pulled out the usual bottle of 100 proof vodka along with the two shot glasses. She smiled when he leaned over to kiss her cheeks before he turned his stool toward the TV. “So you’re here for my TV then?”</p><p>“You know electricity at my house is bad,” Ivan said as he lifted a shot glass. He waited a moment, watching Sophia until she shook her head, then drank the first shot. “I heard Nikiforov’s finally talking.”</p><p>“Website says it’s starting in five minutes,” she said, glancing up at the old TV as she pulled a blue cleaning rag out of a small red bucket filled with sanitizer. She squeezed it with one hand before wiping the counter, starting where she spilled some vodka. “I feel bad for him. He’s probably worried sick.”</p><p>“If he didn’t do it.” Ivan drained the second glass, watching the woman. Strange. She always drank with him. Their relationship started with them drinking.</p><p>To his surprise, Sophia shook her head with a hum. “I’ve been watching him since his senior debut. I even had a couple of posters…” She then stopped wiping mid-circle. She took a good look at her boyfriend, as though a thought just hit her. “Oh god! You do look just like him!”</p><p>“I do?”</p><p>Sophia nodded as she got him fresh shots. “You could be his father!”</p><p>Ivan smiled as he drank. He knew Sophia had no idea that he was Victor’s father. When that happened, Sophia was barely a teenager, new to the country after moving in with her grandparents and still learning the language. She was too young to have any interest in a case that far away. She didn’t need to know of that connection.</p><p>For a moment, Sophia stared at his arm. His sleeve slipped down to his elbow, revealing a bandage on his forearm very close to his wrist. “I thought you were supposed to bite your prey, Vanya!”</p><p>Ivan smirked at the teasing. Let her believe some animal bit him. She didn’t need to know. Not Yet.</p>
<hr/><p>Dark.</p><p>The space Yuuri Katsuki had woken up in was completely dark. He couldn’t even see cracks of light like he normally would from the boarded up windows. It was so dark he may as well have kept his eyes shut. It made no difference. The space was so small he could pretty much feel it. The space was so tight that his knees were up against his chest, his back pressed against one wall and his feet against the other. His back stung in so many places. His throat was so dry. He had to get out. He knew even before he tried that there was not enough space for kicking to actually work, but he still tried. And he tried again.</p><p>And again.</p><p>And again.</p><p>And again.</p><p>Then a thought made him stop. Air. How much extra air was he wasting? How much was left? <em>Not enough.</em> Already, Yuuri started gasping. He knew his shivering was not just from the cold anymore. “Not now,” he whined as he tried to calm himself. Except there was nothing to ground himself to. He had no way of reaching out to anyone for the help he needed.</p><p>
  <em>‘You’re going to die here.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Alone. In the dark.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em> ‘Like a no body.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Because that’s all you are.'</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'A nobody.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>'Nothing.'</em>
</p><p>
  <em> ‘You’re a waste of space.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘No one cares about you.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘No one is going to find you.’ </em>
</p><p>When Yuuri hands tightened into fists, the hard object around his finger caught his attention, silencing the spiraling thoughts. His engagement ring! He still had his ring! He took a deep breath, rubbing his thumb against the ring. He closed his eyes, feeling the frustrated tears fall out the corners as he focused on that ring. It was gold, with half a snowflake engraved on the inside. The other half was inside the other ring. Victor’s ring.<em> ‘Find me, Vitya!’</em></p>
<hr/><p>Victor sat between his coach and the chief of police at a folding table. The rink sat empty behind them except for the display board with photos of Yuuri. Along with the popular Grand Prix podium photo, there was the family portrait with Victor and Yuri, Yuuri practicing at the Ice Castle, Yuuri with a bowl of katsudon, even one of the two of them at the Sochi banquet, where Yuuri dipped Victor in their dance. It killed Victor a little when he first saw those photos. He actually tripped walking toward the table and bumped the corner of it as he went around to his seat. He missed Yuuri so much, and those photos almost captured his beauty.</p><p>Almost. His Yuuri sparkled with life in a way not photo could ever capture.</p><p>Despite this being Victor’s conference, Chief Sidorov had much more to say. Due to personally overseeing the case, he had much more information. Victor mostly zoned out, catching details here and there as he twisted his ring. The police chief took over this case because it was “related to one of his earlier cases”. They were in contact with Japanese police. They had photos of the skater at every Russian airport and border crossing.</p><p>“Vitya!” Yakov hissed quietly to catch his attention.</p><p>All eyes were on him. Every camera was trained on him, their little red lights staring like additional eyes. Victor took a deep breath. <em>‘This is another performance,’</em> he thought to himself. He prepared for it as such. He had a printed statement that he practiced with his rink mates, who were standing in the back of the large hall. Still, all of the runs through could have prepared him for the gravity of that moment.</p><p>Like trying to skate on melting ice, this was a very delicate dance. One tiny mistake could cost him everything.</p><p>“Yuuri Katsuki is…” Victor’s voice trailed off as his calm shattered into a million pieces inside. Officially, he was supposed to be describing the younger man as someone might describe a friend, but the words he’d rehearsed over and over again the past few nights suddenly didn’t feel like enough. The whole page of kind words did not scratch the surface of his fiancé. His Yuuri shined brighter than the sun, moon, and all of the stars. Feeling the paper crumble in his hands, Victor took another deep breath and stood, bumping the table again as he walked around to the side.</p><p>What happened next dominated the news, televised and print, as well as the internet. Russia’s Living Legend, World Champion Victor Nikiforov got down to his knees on the concrete floor. “Yuuri Katsuki is the love of my life. He taught me those two L words, life and love,” he stated through his tears. Then he leaned forward, his fiancé’s tie gathered under his neck and his gold ring flashing in the light, as he bowed so low his sliver bangs puddled around his hands on the hard floor. “I don’t want that third one. Please let him come home.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So Victor’s parts this chapter are mostly parts of the original Chapter 5 (before the rewriting Chapter 3, I had this work mostly finished and was starting the sequel) because those were some of the scenes I really wanted to keep, especially Victor wearing the tie he hates so much and going into a full on-the-floor bow.</p><p>*Kudos and comments are always welcomed</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It started with a tumblr post, of all things. Not even a figure skating blog. With the apparent fashion theme, of course there were a few posts of the most famous figure skaters mixed with other celebrities. Searching “Nikiforov” in that blog’s tags came up with several ads featuring Victor, looking absolutely perfect in whatever outfit he wore. One of the top posts for that blog was a cologne ad where Victor stood on the ice in his Stammi Vicino costume after apparently having carved a heart into the ice, a finger on his lips as he smiled mischievously.</p><p>According to the newest post, the moderator of this blog was looking for something in their attic when they found a box of old magazines from the 80’s. Hoping to find some unique content, possibly even forgotten photos of celebrities, they started going through the box. Surely there had to be some amazing retro fashion, and they promised to post some of it after digitally restoring the scans.</p><p>This particular page had to be posted immediately though. It wasn’t even scanned. Instead, the mod took a picture of the photo while apparently still in the attic. It was slightly blurred from the phone shaking as the picture was taken, and they promised to scan the entire article once the shock wore off.</p><p>It was the 1983 Juniors World Figure Skating Championship podium. A teenage Katerina Nikiforova stood at the top, wearing a dark pink leotard with gold sparkles and her long pale blonde hair in a ponytail, holding up her gold medal as she smiled at the cameras in a gesture that was almost eerily similar to Victor Nikiforov. So his mother was also a figure skater. That would not be too shocking. It was the flag she stood under. Red and white stripes, with a box of blue filled with fifty white stars.</p><p>Then another tumblr account, apparently a true crime blog moderated by someone who clearly had an unhealthy interest in serial killers, reblogged it to brag that they found some interesting information. They happened to work at a library that was working to digitize their microfilm archives and just happened to have stumbled upon scans of the newspapers from that time. Hours later, their queue started posting once an hour, featuring black and white scans of various newspapers and magazine articles.</p><p>In Yakov’s office while everyone practiced on the ice, Victor sat with a cup of jam-sweetened tea in one shaking hand as the other remained on the old computer’s mouse, constantly refreshing the screen. Unlike the rest of the skaters, his skates had been confiscated by police for forensic analysis. Somehow, they decided that his phone location data was not enough to prove that he was nowhere near Lake Ladoga. Apparently wanting to spend one day on the couch after training and coaching for over a month straight was “suspicious”. He knew it posted only once at the top of the hour, but he couldn’t help reloading the page repeatedly. Everything he had known about his mother before this was in the documents box he’d saved, which he realized was nowhere near enough. He had put that collection together when he was a child mourning the loss of his mother while preparing to possibly testify against his father. He only grabbed what eight year old Victor thought was important, medals and photos of her from the living room.</p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>KATERINA NIKIFOROVA TAKES HOME GOLD FOR US AT JUNIOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP</p>
  <p>KATERINA NIKIFOROVA SEEN CELEBRATING GOLD MEDAL WITH NEW BOYFRIEND IVAN MOROZOV</p>
  <p>US FIGURE SKATER KATERINA NIKIFOROVA REPORTED MISSING, KIDNAPPING SUSPECTED</p>
  <p>KATERINA ANNOUCES RETIREMENT FROM FIGURE SKATING, MARRIAGE TO BOYFRIEND IVAN MOROZOV IN SOVIET RUSSIA</p>
  <p>FORMOR JUNIOR WORLD CHAMPION FIGURE SKATER KATERINA MOROZOVA CLAIMS NOT TO BE A VICTIM OF KIDNAPPING, NIKIFOROV FAMILY DISAGREES</p>
  <p>KATERINA MOROZOV WELCOMES HEALTHY BABY GIRL, ASKS FOR PRIVACY</p>
</blockquote><p>Victor stopped before clicking refresh again. Baby girl. His parents had a daughter before him. There was an older sister he had no memory of. He couldn’t even remember his mother ever mentioning having any other children. He knew there were no photos of a girl. The only evidence of another member of the Morozov family was the article, featuring a photo of Katerina cradling a baby in her arms - two years before Victor was born. That, and the next headline.</p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>COLETTE MOROZOVA, DAUGHTER OF FORMER JUNIOR WORLD CHAMPION FIGURE SKATER, DIES IN TRAGIC BOATING ACCIDENT, PARENTS ASK FOR PRIVACY AS THEY GRIEVE.</p>
</blockquote><p>Victor did have some happy memories of his father, all from before his mother taught him to skate. His happiest memories of the man happened in a little wooden boat with nothing but freezing cold water all around them. He remembered his father trying to teach him to fish. His mother insisting that he wore a little lifejacket that his father would promptly remove as soon as land was out of sight. Back then, Victor was more than happy to have that seemingly useless thing taken off. Looking back, especially after reading that headline, he felt a chill at the memory.</p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>MONTHS AFTER LOSS OF DAUGHTER, KATERINA MOROZOVA WELCOMES HEALTHY BABY BOY</p>
</blockquote><p>Victor didn’t need to read the article to know that was him. The year was correct. It still surprised him when he noticed his name in the newsprint. Viktor Morozov. He and Yakov had spent years making sure that that name stayed buried. He didn’t know how his coach managed to keep his old name from connecting to his current name, just that he was extremely thorough. All it would take was a simple internet search to connect that to</p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>FORMER JUNIOR WORLD FIGURE SKATING CHAMPION KATERINA NIKIFOROVA, 27, MURDERED, HUSBAND IVAN MOROZOV IN POLICE CUSODY</p>
</blockquote><p>That article featured the same photo from Katerina’s last gold medal win, next to a mug shot of a smirking Ivan Morozov. Without color, the man in the photo looked exactly like Victor. Others seemed to agree, if the reblogs comparing that image to recent photos of Victor were anything to go by. They quickly dominated the Nikiforov tag on tumblr, which started trending worldwide after the fashion blog posted the image of Katerina. Screenshots of those posts made it to Twitter and Instagram. Some of which were tagged to @v-nikiforov. Some were also tagged to @aimerlavodka767442 with lots of exclamation points.</p><hr/><p>Sophia had just parked her car in front of her fiancé’s house. He rarely ever invited her over, and she honestly didn’t like coming to his house. It was cold, dark, so silent that it felt like something evil was watching, waiting for its moment to strike. It was so far away from everything. She worried about Ivan getting hurt way out here and no one knowing until it was too late. It was bad enough that the man refused to get a cell phone, insisting that his little rotary phone with the peeling smiley face stickers was enough.</p><p>Her phone had been buzzing the entire hour-long drive to the shack Ivan called home. She hadn’t looked at it since she got the confirmation from her doctor. She wanted to make sure that Ivan was the first person she told and pulling her phone out of her purse would make it far too tempting to tweet about it.</p><p>Pregnant. Sophia couldn’t wait to tell him! She wanted to tell him right after her at-home pregnancy test came back positive, but she wanted to keep it private. Something that would not happen at a bar full of the usual drunks for the last few days. In fact, she only had a few hours between her doctor’s appointment that day and her bar’s business hours. Otherwise, she might have invited him to her apartment instead.</p><p>As always, it was dark. The camping lantern was on the corner of the table closest to the door. Besides the cracks in the boards covering the windows, that was the only source of light, so Ivan must have gone out. She parked next to his car, so he knew he didn’t leave the area. He had been hunting more often, if the bandage around his arm was anything to go by. After turning that light on, She settled on a creaky chair, hoping that Ivan would return soon.</p><p>Then she heard it. A distinctive tap. The sudden sound made her jump to her feet. Her chair loudly clattering to the floor made her jump again, gasping loudly. Sophia took a few deep breaths to calm herself. She was pregnant, after all. She didn’t want to stress herself too much. But there was someone there in the dark shack, and Ivan wasn’t there to protect her. She grabbed the lantern, swinging it once by the handle. It wasn’t much, but it felt like a better weapon than her purse if needed. “Hello?”</p><p>Besides the main room, there were two other rooms with doors facing each other. One on her left was the master bedroom. The right was a smaller room that Ivan once mentioned had been his son’s room before he lost his family. The bottom half of this door had more smiley face stickers, as though a child had stuck them there. There was also an old sign with Cyrillic that she ignored before.</p><p>“Viktor,” she whispered to herself, tracing the letters. Ivan’s son had the same name as that figure skater she told him he resembled. What a strange coincidence! Had to be. She knew her favorite athlete spelled his name with a c. She remembered watching him, during an interview, explaining that he spelled it that way because that was how his mother spelled it.</p><p>Sophia took another breath, before calling, “is someone there?”</p><p>The tap came from somewhere behind that door. It was weaker, but still there. Realizing that whoever it was probably was not a threat (they could have attacked by now), Sophia released the breath she didn’t know she was holding, before walking into the room.</p><p>Blood. There was dried blood on the floor. Just spots, but a lot of them. Someone had been hurt here. Her first thought was Ivan. Had someone attacked her fiancé and left him somewhere in here to die? Another tap lead her eyes to the closet doors, tied together by strips of fabric. A sweater sleeve? Too narrow to be her Ivan’s. Still, she braced herself to find Ivan behind those doors as she untied the knots, wishing she hadn’t left her purse on the table.</p><p>Yuuri squinted his eyes when the light broke in. He had heard the front door open and close, and had braced himself for Ivan to “visit” him for a “talk”. When heard a chair creak instead, he realized that it was not his abductor. It was someone else. Someone who could possibly help him! He could get out with putting Victor at risk. It would be perfect!</p><p>Too perfect</p><p>For a moment, the Japanese man hesitated. It could be a trap. It could be one of Ivan’s “associates”, or even Ivan himself, waiting to for him to do something. He was already in this tight space for biting Ivan (he thought he still tasted blood). He already had so many scabs that peeled away every time he moved more than just breathing. How much worse could it get?</p><p>A woman opened the door, swearing quietly when she saw him. Or maybe it just sounded quiet to him. So far away, even though he could barely see her kneel next to him. Then she grabbed his shoulders to turn him and the pain that shot through his body slammed him back to Earth.</p><p>“You’re Yuuri Katsuki.”</p><p>Yuuri could hear the fear in her voice and knew this was not a trap. That she was not there to harm him or cause harm to him. She knew who he was. Then a wave of embarrassment hit him. She knew who he was, and now she saw him like this. Bound, beaten, dirty, shoved in a cramped closet. Too weak to even save himself. Too scared to even try.</p><p><em>‘So stubborn,’</em> Yuuri could almost hear Victor say affectionately. Yes. He knew he was stubborn. He could have ended this much sooner and without any of this abuse. He had a fiancé to protect though. He would go through much worse if it meant his Victor was safe.</p><p>Sophia couldn’t believe her eyes. Yuuri Katsuki was in a closet in her fiancé’s house. Why? Had he been here the entire time? Then she glanced back at the floor behind her. The blood. The ripped sleeve that matched the sweater the missing skater wore. She looked back at the man. His tear streaked face. The scabbed lip. The fading black eye. Those glassy brown eyes. The realization nearly overwhelmed her.</p><p>Ivan did this.</p><p>“I need my phone,” she said as she stood up. She turned and just made it into the hall.</p><p>Ivan stood there. Her purse laid on its side with its contents scattered across the surface. Her phone was under his steel-toe boot. “So now you know,” was all he said before pressing his down, shattering the screen.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry for the (sort of?) info-dump. There are so many things in this chapter that I planned from the very beginning. Some of which are important for this, and others for the sequel. </p><p>I would have written snippets of the news articles but good lord this chapter is already the longest so far. I know the chapters don’t have to be the same length, but I’d rather not have one chapter that’s so much longer than the others. </p><p>*I put an announcement on my profile about this, but I wanted to make sure that you are aware that this series is not on a fixed schedule.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Early update, mostly because I need to not see "31 July 2020" every time I look at my dashboard.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So now you know.”</p>
<p>Sophia watched as her fiancé broke her phone under his boot. Her brown eyes drifted up until they met his grey. She had never seen him look at her like that. This was not the man she fell in love with. Not the Ivan Morozov she knew.</p>
<p>
  <em>It had been a normal day at her bar. Maybe it was a little quiet, though after practically having a viewing party for the Grand Prix Final the night before the calm was welcomed. Hers was one of maybe three businesses in the area that actually showed the competition and served alcohol. It had been a fun night of placing bets and drinking shots for various reasons (one shot of 100-proof vodka for every rotation in Victor Nikiforov’s jumps turned out to be a bad idea). Even the bar owner herself was still working through a hangover. She made a note to herself to do inventory by the end of the week. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It was still stuck to the whiskey shelf. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>This bar had been her grandparents’ until they couldn’t work anymore. They were too tired, they told her as they signed the business over to her. They had been training her to take over since she had enough of a grasp of Russian to handle a register. They reasoned that twenty five was a good age for her to take over. They did not tell her that they were both ill. That they were both in debt. That signing the business over to her was to ensure that she was taken care of. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The bar was all she had left of them. She left everything exactly as they arranged it. Down to the literal sleigh bells on the door. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Sophia couldn’t help but cringe when they jingled brightly as the door opened. She hated those bells. As a teenager, she swore that the day she inherited the establishment, she was going to rip them off the door and throw them into the nearest trashcan. When the actual day came, she suddenly found herself unable to. Every time she looked at them, she thought of her grandmother’s smile when she heard them, then her grandfather smiling fondly at his wife. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And so, they stayed.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> “Be there in a minute!” she shouted from the back, where she was prepping her mop bucket. There was always at least one person whose drink brought their dinner back up. Sophia found that it was better to be ready before it happened than to have to set up the bucket and have some dishonest people leave without paying. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The first time she saw Ivan was a moment she never wanted to forget. He was sitting at the bar, writing in a small notebook. The streetlights seeping through the windows made his white hair glow like a halo. Then he looked up at smiled at her as though she was a friend he hadn’t seen in years. “Hello beautiful.” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She always thought of herself as very plain. Frizzy brown hair and plain brown eyes, like pretty much every other person. Average height. A little too thin. No one had called her beautiful since her grandmother before she passed, five years ago. Hearing him say that without a hint of irony made her smile. In that moment, despite her shirt being splattered from soapy water spray and her head still aching, Sophia felt beautiful. There was something in the way those grey eyes stared at her that made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. </em>
</p>
<p>Those same eyes looked at her so coldly now, and it suddenly occurred to her that she had never seen him angry. Sure, he did threaten people that got too close to her at the bar. In the first month of their relationship, most of the regulars had told she should stay away from Ivan. That he looked dangerous when he was angry, possibly deadly. She brushed it off. How could someone who loved to shower her in paper flowers and vodka shots be deadly? They had to either be jealous of their relationship or paranoid. If only she had listened.</p>
<p>“Vanya, what-”</p>
<p>Ivan walked toward her, backing her into the wall behind her. He grabbed her chin, lifting her face to stare straight into her eyes as he said, “I didn’t expect to find you poking around my house.”</p>
<p>“Vanya, mon amour, what have you done?” she asked, her eyes shooting to the open door. She left the closet open. Yuuri Katsuki was watching from the closet she found him in. From this angle, she could see all of the cuts on one of his arms and the blood on this side of his sweater.</p>
<p>“You come into my house – uninvited - invade my privacy, and now question me?”</p>
<p>Suddenly, Sophia found herself on the ground. She touched her jaw, wincing when she felt where Ivan’s fingers likely left bruises, before pulling herself to her feet. “Ivan, please calm down and-”</p>
<p>“Calm down?” Ivan repeated in outrage. She felt the slap without even seeing the hand that hit her. That slap gave her an opening to escape, and she took it. With a hand holding her cheek, Sophia grabbed her purse and ran out the door.</p>
<p>Forty five minutes. Taking the shortest route possible, her bar was still forty five minutes away. If she got there, she could call for help with a locked door between herself and Ivan. With that plan in mind, she reached into her purse. “No. No. No,” she mumbled as she frantically patted around the inside. It was empty, its contents having been spilled on the table she ran past. Including her keyring.</p>
<p>Which now hung from Ivan’s finger as he watched her from the door.</p><hr/>
<p>“Uh…sir? There was a…a package intercepted for a “Viktor Morozov” addressed to the Sport Champions Club.”</p>
<p>Police Chief Vlad Sidorov paused in the middle of stirring his coffee. His third(?)…fourth(?)…fifth(?) coffee of the day. He stopped counting after Yakov Feltsman called him on his cell phone and went off. Nothing in his decades-long career could have prepared him for something quite as terrifying as the coach shouting at him through the phone for an hour straight. If they had not been friends for so long, he would not have tolerated it. But Yakov was the closest thing he had to a best friend. Yakov had been there when his wife left him. He offered his couch when his wife kicked him out of her family home. He had helped him find a house in Saint Petersburg. Yakov Feltsman gave him the biggest break in the case that lead to his promotion.</p>
<p>He could understand Yakov being overprotective of his skaters, especially Victor Nikiforov.</p>
<p>He was ready to get the famous skater off the suspects list. Vlad knew Victor well enough to know that he was harmless. He was the closest to the victim though, which meant that he was naturally the most likely suspect. The GPS data on Victor’s phone put him in his apartment for the approximate time the data on Yuuri Katsuki’s phone placed him on his last known location – employees at a café had remembered the Japanese man walking their poodle past their window. The tarp over the Russian skater’s pink convertible (why?) was covered in a year’s worth of dust. Yakov’s car didn’t show up in any of the traffic cameras leading toward Lake Ladoga, though he did appear on a grocery store security camera later that night with Yuri Plisetsky buying cold medicine, instant miso, and bowls of microwave soup. Victor’s skate came back clean.</p>
<p>He also did not want to work that angle though. Yakov had mentioned a phone call with Ivan Morozov, but that was impossible. They had both been in the courtroom when the man was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to a long list of crimes, ranging from unpaid traffic violations to murders. The bastard was lucky it wasn’t the death penalty. He still felt that it should have been. The world would be a better place without people like Ivan Morozov. Vlad would have shot him himself, if given half the chance. He knew Yakov would have right there in the courtroom if he didn’t have a trembling Victor Nikiforov tucked under his arm.</p>
<p>Yet, there were those articles that Yakov had just screamed at him about. He couldn’t help but to pull out the old case files after his officers found the paper flowers in Victor Nikiforov’s locker. It reminded him so much of the Morozov house the day of the murder. There had been so many paper flowers in that house.</p>
<p>And now this package, packed with even more paper flowers. All neatly folded newsprint, like the bouquet from the locker room. Those had been a series of newspaper clippings about Victor Nikiforov, from his earliest mention in his first year in juniors to his return to the 2016 World Championship. The paper flowers in the box were more recent articles about Yuuri Katsuki’s abduction. Some of them had bloodied marks.</p>
<p>Nestled in the middle was a ripped sweater sleeve, a lock of black hair, and a dark photo of Yuuri Katsuki’s back, blood dripping from every slash to his pale skin. A note was scrawled into the back: <em>‘We’re waiting, Vitya.’</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I somehow managed to completely forget about the bouquet of paper flowers in Victor’s locker. After writing two separate scenes about them. In a story titled “Papers Flowers.” </p>
<p>I’ve also realized while writing this chapter that I could make my life easier by saving the entire work in one document. Before I thought of that, I had all 9 parts (fun fact: I save as “parts” because when I wrote my very first fic I forgot how to spell “chapter”) plus additional scenes and other works (30 documents total) open at the same time.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*** (ToT)/~~~ I’ve decided to up the rating to <strong> “Explicit” </strong> and added <strong> “Rape/Non-Con” </strong> to the warnings.<br/>The scene is in <strong>[[[ </strong>triple bold brackets<strong> ]]] </strong> at the end. ***</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a loud night. Ivan had the usual associates over to drink. And drink they did. Shot glasses clinked together every few minutes. Bottle after bottle clattered together in a box to be thrown out later. Chairs scraped across the wood floors. The men spoke louder, making cruder jokes as they continued to drink.</p><p>It was one of those nights Yuuri expected to not see Ivan. If he had company, Ivan left Yuuri alone. He would drink with his guests until they left then went to bed. Seemingly forgetting that Yuuri existed for the night. It gave Yuuri a chance to rest the best he could with his arms behind his back, in a cramped closet.</p><p>At least he had her to look forward to. “Soph”, as Ivan called her when he was in a good mood, slipped in every morning and night with a cup of watered-down orange juice to check on him. Especially after bad nights, she would ask him the same questions about either his basic information or his hometown. He noticed that she never asked about Victor Nikiforov or his life in Saint Petersburg, as though she knew that her fiancé was very likely listening.</p><p>Then Yuuri heard the door to the room open. He had only seconds to brace himself before the closet doors flew open and he was dragged out. Ivan and his friends spoke to each other in Russian so slurred and fast that he couldn’t even pick out what words he knew for context. Not even the hand gestures made any sense.</p><p>Then Ivan left with a handful of rubles, taking the light with him as he closed the door behind him. After that, Yuuri saw only the flash of phone cameras. He didn’t need to see anything else. He felt the hands grabbing his body, his pants. The fingers forcing their way in. His arms being allowed to fall to his sides as his wrists were untied, only for that rope to be looped around his neck. Then he heard a familiar guitar strumming.</p>
<hr/><p>When Ivan showed up at her bar just minutes before closing, telling her to bring cleaning supplies, Sophia feared the worse. Ivan had gone too far and Yuuri Katsuki was dead. That she was going to walk into that room and find the famous skater laying in a pool of blood. Or his body so battered no one would recognize him. Or both.</p><p>Instead, she found Yuuri alive, laying on his side in just that ripped sweater. He seemed to stare at his bloodied fingers and palms on the floor just in front of his face, though his eyes were so unfocused. His wrists, finally free from the ropes, were encircled by angry red scabs instead. The rope that had been there was still loosely wrapped around his bruised neck.</p><p>“Mon dieu,” she couldn’t help whispering as she kneeled next to him, instinctively reaching her hand out to comfort him.</p><p>“Don’t!” Yuuri’s voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. His body curled tighter, his fingers curled into his own hair. He winced when he accidently touched a fresh injury on his head, his cracked fingernails scraping a dried scab on his scalp. He was missing the fingernails on both of his middle fingers.</p><p>Sophia covered her mouth with her hands as she took the scene in. “Yuuri, I’m so sorry. I-”</p><p>Ivan stormed in and pulled Yuuri up to his knees by his chin. “I’m getting real tired of these games.” They told him they got a phone number out of Yuuri half an hour after Ivan them. The “home” number, they boasted. None of the men had given the area code a second thought. Not even Ivan noticed as he dialed the phone number after the other men left. That is, until he reached a voicemail inbox.</p><p>Yuuri Katsuki had given his own phone number.</p><p>For a tense moment, Ivan stared at Yuuri’s face, turning his chin in one direction then the other. Then he smirked. “Soph, get my camera!”</p><p>“Ivan, he needs-”</p><p>“Get my goddamn camera, woman!” Ivan shouted, while he also squeezed Yuuri’s chin tighter. He watched his fiancée run out before turning back to him. He watched as fresh tears fell down those dirty cheeks. In an almost intimate gesture, he wiped a tear away with his other hand. “You’re lucky you have such a pretty face, Yuuri.”</p><p>
  <em>“You have such a pretty face, Yuuri,” Victor murmured as they laid in bed, combing his hair back out of his face with his fingers. </em>
</p><p>That hand went up Yuuri’s cheek before it grabbed his hair and pulled him back out of the memory. There was a flash. A click. A buzzing sound as the camera printed the photo.</p><p>
  <em>The strips fell into the photo booth collection tray just a second before Victor swiped them with a huge grin. Then he draped his arms around Yuuri to show him. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>They grabbed him. They wouldn’t stop grabbing. Shoving. Pulling. Squeezing. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘You are nothing’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘See how weak you are?’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘You’re broken.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘They broke you so easily’</em>
</p><p>
  <em> ‘Pathetic.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Worthless.’ </em>
</p><p>Then Yuuri found himself falling to the floor. He saw Ivan dragging his fiancée out of the room with him, pulling the door shut. Yuuri found himself alone in the cold, dark room again. Everything hurt. He couldn’t breathe. Though the rope had either fallen or been removed from his neck at some point, he felt choked all the same.</p><p>He tried to ground himself like he had during the last few panic attacks. The only thing he could do in that closet was touch his ring. He pressed it, twisted it, anything to get his mind off the trigger.</p><p>Except, laying there with his hands in front of them, he saw that his engagement ring was gone. They took it. He vaguely remembered those…them talking about it. Debating if someone should keep it for sell it. While the figure skater’s engagement ring was famous and so very valuable, selling it would raise questions. Attract unwanted attention. But money was money, and none of them had nearly as much as they wanted.</p><p>A quiet buzz filled the air. Yuuri’s froze, listening for the buzz again. That wasn’t. It couldn’t be. With a quiet groan, he forced himself to turn over. Despite how tired he was, how much he ached, Yuuri couldn’t help his quiet laugh.</p><p>Under an empty solid wood bedframe, a forgotten phone vibrated.</p>
<hr/><p>Yuri sat on his bed, watching online videos. Though he would never admit it, but he loved watching videos of Yuuri Katsuki skating. Though the falls were painful to watch sometimes, his performances overall were beautiful, especially after Victor took over as his coach last season. Since the season ended, Yuri Plisetsky used to secretly study the videos of Yuuri’s short program and free skate. By this point, he thought he’d watched every video of <em>Eros</em> at least once, just to see that step sequence from every angle possible.</p><p>So it was a surprise when a new user uploaded a new video titled KATSUKI REAL EROS</p><p>The video started…with the Official ISU video of Yuuri’s performance at Worlds being playing on another phone.</p><p><em>‘A video of an old video,’</em> Yuri thought, about to move on. The video wasn’t even good quality. He could get nothing out of it. Then there was the background noise. Between the noise and the static, Yuri had to press the headphone against his ear to hear the music.</p><p>Then the camera shifted.</p>
<hr/><p>“Yakov, why is Victor in my kitchen?”</p><p>Lilia asked as she sat on a plush chair in the living room with a cup of tea. Yakov barely glanced up from the papers he had spread on the coffee table. He knew that his ex-wife had no interest in Victor, though he never figured out why. It could even be fair to say that their separation and eventual divorce started the day Yakov started training little Viktor Morozov. He tried to get the former prima donna to train the silver-haired boy, but couldn’t even get her to do a preliminary evaluation of him. She wouldn’t even watch him skate.</p><p>They were on professional speaking terms. They had mutual respect for each other as coaches in the same facility with the same student. Unlike Victor, Lilia had watched Yuuri Katsuki skate at competitions, then later dance in her own studio. She pretty much told Victor that she would train his fiancé with Yuri and he let her. They often ended up discussing the Japanese skater’s progress after he finished practice.</p><p>Lilia never invited Victor to her house though.</p><p>“You heard about the old newspapers.” Yakov knew she heard about them. She was training teenage girls of the If-my-phone-is-not-in-my-hand-at-all-times-I-WILL-DIE generation that afternoon. They were probably gossiping about every post as they went live while on the barre. Surely, Lilia would have heard their reactions, probably scolded them for having their phones in her studio.</p><p>“His mother was an American,” Lilia practically spat in disgust over the lip of her tea cup. Yakov couldn’t help shaking his head. Of course she probably caught her ballerinas looking at the very first post. Once, he loved her for her dedication to whatever she did. Her sharp eye for the smallest details, the most subtitle flinches and slightly off positions. Those girls should have known better than to try to sneak their phones past her.</p><p>“She was.”</p><p>“He could have American citizenship.”</p><p>“He could.” “Do you think he’d leave for the States?”</p><p>Before Yakov could question why she brought that up, they heard a scream upstairs, followed almost immediately by a dish shattering in the kitchen. They both frowned at each other, silently reminding each other that this was precisely why they agreed on not having children, as they heard Victor run up the stairs.</p><p>While Lilia ran to her kitchen (“If that boy left the stove on, Yakov, I swear”), the coach went to Yuri’s room. The teenager was very much like a cat. He would only be touched on his terms or else he will retaliate. It was rare to see anyone besides his grandfather hold him. So it was a surprise to find him buried in Victor’s arms, his face buried in the other skater’s shirt.</p><p>Yuri Plisetsky was sobbing like a small child.</p><p>Victor stroked his blonde hair, whispering what could have only been every term of endearment in every language he could think of. The adult was trembling himself, purposely looking at the opposite wall. Then he glanced at Yakov, nodding toward the phone on the floor near the door.</p><p>The phone case was cracked, the glass screen protector shattered. A video was still playing.</p><p><strong> [[[Video</strong>: A flashlight is trained on Yuuri, his hands and knees rubbing against the old wood floor. The one piece of clothing on him is the remains of his sweater pooled around his shaking arms. He’s far thinner than he should be and his hair is matted with grime and knots. Every visible part of his arms and back are marked in deep, angry looking scabs. A man is behind him, thrusting roughly into him.</p><p>More stand around. They speak in Russian so slurred it could have been another language about what they were going to Yuuri. All of the horrible ways they could take him. Fuck him. Break him. Make him talk. How by the end he may even learn to enjoy it.</p><p>That they should send the video to Victor Nikiforov, to “teach him how a real man fucks a bitch.”</p><p>Yuuri can be heard cry in pain. Begging for it to stop, for it to end. Begging for someone to help him. When the other man pulls the ropes around his neck, the video of his <em>Eros</em> program could be heard playing on a loop in the background<strong>]]]</strong></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>When I started writing this fic, I did not intend to write anything like that. I knew this was not going to be easy. I knew ahead of time that Yuuri would be hurt. My original version of this didn’t have a rape scene. Truthfully, I feel like a good part of this version is writing itself. Like I’m just here with the caffeine addiction (especially these last two weeks. I’ve had so much caffeine I’d wake up a vampire)  (._.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“Dad! I got one!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>They sat in a small boat in the middle of near-freezing water. Against the dark water and pre-dawn sky, the father and son stood out with their light hair and fair skin peeking out from their warm coats and knit hats. Especially little Viktor Morozov in his bright blue jacket. Despite sitting behind his father, thus protected from the full force of the wind, his little cheeks and nose were still red from the cold. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You know what to do,” Ivan said, watching his own fishing pole. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m trying!” Viktor shouted, struggling to turn the reel. His knit gloves provided no traction. He couldn’t even get the handle to go a full rotation without his gloves slipping. He kept trying, though with a little frustrated whine that refused to be held back. His dad had been angry a lot since this family trip started. Viktor had been woken up in the middle of the night days before to his mother throwing his clothes into an old backpack and his father shouting at her to hurry up. There had been lots of bad words mixed in. There had been many more mean words shouted at his mother through the following days. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Viktor knew his dad was angry about something. Maybe if he caught a fish by himself, that would make his dad happy. Maybe if his dad was happy, his mom wouldn’t get hurt that night. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Suddenly, Ivan sat behind his son with his arms around him as he put his own hands over his. “Looks like you got a big one!” he shouted, his boots bracing against the side of the boat as he put his hands over his son’s, squeezing those small hands tights as he helped reel in the fish. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Viktor only risked a quick peek at his father. He saw the grin on the older man’s face. Then the boat shook violently as the fish tried to pull itself free. For a moment, he wished the bright orange life vest was on him, like he promised his mom, instead of laying on the floor of the boat. Only for a moment though. He was with his dad, after all. His dad would keep him safe. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Right? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Soon, the fish was hanging in the air at the end of the fishing line. Ivan easily caught the flopping fish with one hand and cut the line with a knife in his other hand. “You did good, Vitya!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Viktor’s smile returned in full force at the praise. His father’s praise was rare, though he knew he got most of it. The smile faltered slightly when the flopping fish was then tossed into his hands. Then he saw the camera pointed at him. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Vitya! Smile!” </em>
</p><p>Victor awoke in a guestroom of Lilia’s house. After having a long conversation on the phone with the police chief, then another one with Lilia, Yakov called Mila and Georgi over that night for an emergency skate team meeting. Victor suspected it was more that the coach didn’t want any of his skaters alone that night.</p><p>Of course, Yakov probably didn’t plan for all four of them (plus one cat) to end up in the same bed.</p><p>It was a tight fit. Victor could sense that he was close to the edge of the mattress. He was on his side with one arm around Yuri. Mila also had an arm around Yuri on his other side. Georgi had an arm draped over Mila, his fingers touching the youngest skater’s shoulder. There were candy wrappers and cracker crumbs all over the bed. Potya was crouched at the end of the bed, watching them.</p><p>Victor sighed, watching his team mates sleep. They were in this room for him. They had their own rooms. They originally went to their own bedrooms after dinner, which ended up being decidedly way off-diet take out. Their coach knew they needed a cheat night. They suspected that he also needed comfort food, though he would never admit to it.</p><p>
  <em> “The fuck are you doing?” Yuri demanded, startling Victor. The teenager stood there in his cheetah-print pajamas, his hair still messy and eyes still red from crying. He had been strangely quiet since that video, barely speaking during dinner and the meeting.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> He had found Victor in his track jacket at the dining room table with his notebook out. There were crumbled balls of paper scattered around. The world champion was hunched over, his eyes pressed into the palms of his hands over an open page. Written on it was a rough draft of a eulogy for Yuuri Katsuki.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Nope. You’re not doing this,” Yuri said as he pulled him out of the chair. He dragged Victor by his sleeve as he knocked on their rink mates’ doors. </em>
</p><p>Victor pressed a kiss against Yuri’s cheek before he slipped out of the bed. Lilia was already upset with him for leaving her stove on and managing to burn the soup he was heating in her favorite pot. He didn’t need her to wake up to find the mess on her table. She managed to hold back after Yakov told her about the video, but just barely. He knew she probably wouldn’t show the mercy twice.</p><p>The dining room light was on. The table had been cleared. Yakov sat there with a bottle of vodka and two glasses. He had the notebook under his hand, on top of a file folder labeled <em>Katsuki, Y</em>. Without even looking, the coach started pouring the second glass. “Vitya, sit. Have a drink.”</p><p>“Coach?”</p><p>Yakov gave Victor the look. The look he knew all of his skaters, past and present, have refer to as his “don’t talk back or you’re doing laps around the building” look. That was normally reserved for the rink, and he wasn’t going to risk his best skater running outside at 3 am, but he knew Victor wasn’t sure of it. He waited until the younger man was seated before he pushed the glass over. Then, he put his hand on his shoulder as he lifted the notebook. “I don’t want you thinking like this.”</p><p>Victor sipped the alcohol. Truthfully, he was not that much of a fan of strong vodka. It reminded him of his father. Of those light nights listening to his shouting, first at his mother, then at him for the last year. Of broken glass on the floor under a splatter on the wall. Of punched-out holes in the walls. Bruises, cuts, and fractured ribs.</p><p>“Katsuki is stronger than this. You need to be too.”</p><p>He knew that Yuuri was strong. Victor didn’t need anyone to tell him that. He saw it every time his fiancé swallowed his anxiety and stepped out onto the ice to be judged. His every performance was a testament to his inner strength, even if he didn’t see it himself.</p><p>Victor couldn’t stop thinking of that video. His father hurt him. He let them rape his fiancé. They abused him to <em>Eros</em>. To the program inspired by their first dance in Sochi. To the music they planned to have their first dance as a married couple to. They took it and ruined it.</p><p>Victor didn’t know if he himself was strong enough. Yakov huffed a sigh, patting Victor’s shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”</p><p>“We.” Not just “you.” Not even “you two”. That meant so much to Victor at that moment. It meant that Yakov was there for him. That the whole team was going to be there for him. He didn’t have to be strong alone.</p><p>Suddenly, Yakov had his arms around him, holding Victor close as the silver haired skater cried. While he knew Victor was practically addicted to being held, it was rare for Yakov to hug him. The last time, there was so much more hair for him to stroke. Somehow, the world champion felt just as small though, with his head tucked under his chin.</p><p>While he cried in his coach’s arms, Victor remembered being held by his father in his dream. That had felt so safe too. Was that the last time they were in that boat? It had to be. He was sure that was the last time he went fishing with his father. The last time he saw his father smile at him. The last photo his father hung on the wall.</p><p>Victor remembered the wall of photos in his father’s office.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>(*^_^*) Team Russia snuggle-up. I actually originally wrote this with Georgi behind Victor, but I wanted Victor to wake up and see all three of them. Plus, this makes him getting out of bed easier.</p><p>In other news, you may have noticed that I put a total chapter number up because<br/>*drumroll*<br/>I FINALLY FINISHED WRITING THIS STORY＼(^o^)／<br/>Sure, I still have to edit, but the drafts are done.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hello! You have reached the voice mailbox of Japan’s Ace, Yuuri Katsuki!” Victor heard his own voice cheerfully announce. He remembered that day. It was supposed to be a rest day, but they both somehow got roped into helping around Yu-Topia. Mostly Yuuri, since Victor only knew basic Japanese. Truthfully, he wasn’t even supposed to be working at all, but managed to convince Hiroko-okāsan to let him wash dishes. He didn’t need to speak Japanese to wash a bowl after all, and the sooner dishes were done the sooner they could all rest.</p>
<p>Between the lunch and dinner rush, Victor noticed that Yuuri had left his phone on a tray after bussing tables. He knew Yuuri had never set up his voicemail and decided to fix that. Thankfully, Hiroko-okāsan knew the passcode (“Did you try 2-5-1-2?”).</p>
<p>“Victor!” Yuuri protested in the background, dishes clattering as he set down a tray a little too hard. Mari-onēsan and Minako-sensei could be heard laughing in the background. Hiroko-okāsan fussing over rattling pot lids and a tea kettle that was just about to start whistling. Toshiya-otōsan greeting Makkachin in the yard, who happily barked back in reply.</p>
<p>“Please leave a message after the beep!” Victor quickly said in the recording before laughing. He couldn’t help smiling at the memory of Yuuri trying to grab the phone out of his hands as he held it over both their heads. The recording caught the beginning of Yuuri’s laugh.</p>
<p>Victor ended the call. He remembered Yuuri getting so annoyed about him doing that. He said that he was going to set it up eventually. Apparently, “eventually” had not come up in the previous three years of him owning that phone, as he heard Phichit point out when Yuuri complained to him about it. He also heard the Thai skater say that he could always change it if it was that bad.</p>
<p>Victor liked to think that Yuuri didn’t change it because he liked it.</p>
<p>It was tempting to call again. Not so much for his own voice, but for Yuuri’s voice saying his name, laughing. To hear the sounds of Hasetsu. The sounds of his Japanese family. To hear Makkachin’s bark. He missed those sounds so much. Especially Makkachin.</p>
<p>Instead, he put the phone back in his pocket, looking up at the old house against the dark sky. Twenty years after he last walked here with his hand in his mother’s, and he still remembered the way home. Except, that wasn’t exactly home anymore. Home was wherever Yuuri’s laughter was. Victor looked up at the house where he lived with his parents and at best just saw a house with loose shingles, boarded up windows, and a small yard overrun with weeds. At worst, he saw the place where his mother’s life ended with a single gunshot to her chest.</p>
<p>He didn’t want to be here. Victor would much rather just sell the house. It was supposed to have been sold years ago. Then again, perhaps it was a good thing that it was never sold. That meant Ivan’s office was likely exactly how he left it.</p>
<p>The inside of the house was dark and dusty. Victor was tempted to leave the door open to let some air in, but decided against it. There had been another bouquet of paper flowers on the front step. Ivan had been there recently. For all he knew, the man could be outside watching at that very moment. Victor felt safer in a stuffy house behind a locked door.</p>
<p>The flashlight clicked loudly as it turned on. The first thing the beam of light fell on was the old carpet. At the dark stain on the carpet across the house between the living room and kitchen. Katerina’s blood. That was where his mother died. Victor immediately pointed the flashlight at the peeling wallpaper, trying not to look. He’d never actually seen that spot before. The last time he was there, it had been surrounded by detectives so intimidating that he hid behind his coach.</p>
<p>All of the furniture was covered in dusty tarps, looking like ghosts in the dark. Victor half expected something to appear as the light beam slid across the living room. It felt like something should happen. A breeze from nowhere. Something suddenly falling. A shadow figure. A voice calling-</p>
<p>Victor nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. It was only a cat meme from Yuri. The poor teenager hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in days. Who could, after seeing that video?</p>
<p>After taking a couple of breaths (‘four seconds in, hold, five seconds out’), Victor sent a quick “lol”, then turned on some music just for some noise besides his own building paranoia before putting the phone back in his pocket. He ended up with the classic rock playlist Yuuri shared with him on shuffle. Of course the first song would be <em>Dream On</em> by Aerosmith. It was his mother’s favorite song. He remembered, on bad nights when his father would be shouting well past midnight, his mother would come into his bedroom and hold him as she sang this song to him.</p>
<p>Every step creaked as he made his way up, waving the flashlight around to sweep away spider webs. He definitely was taking a shower as soon as possible. He even thought about stopping by the ice rink for the locker room, imagining how many spiders might catch a ride in his hair. He suddenly wished he wore a jacket with a hood.</p>
<p>It was the first door on the right. As always, the door was the only closed door. His father always kept that door shut. None of the times he’d been that room were by choice. His father had dragged him in every single time, ignoring his mother’s protests that he was just a child, then later that he was an athlete and eventually someone will notice.</p>
<p>“But you won’t talk, right Vitya?” He could still hear his father hiss into his ear, his hot breath smelling like straight cigarette smoke as he held up by his arm. “Good boys know to keep their damn mouth shut.”</p>
<p>Victor cautiously placed a hand on the door, as though his father would sense his presence and fling it open. The majority of the beatings would happen in there, behind a door was an automatic lock so his mother couldn’t defend him. Every night for that final year, Ivan would bring him to his office and demand that Victor quit skating. He was a Morozov. There was no way he’d allow his son to be known for that. For every “no” from the child’s mouth there was a smack, sometimes with a wooden ruler kept for that purpose, until his father got too annoyed with his mother banging on the door.</p>
<p>That last night, Victor had been tired from practice and accidentally mumbled something smart. Just the usual immature thing a child would think of. He felt the smack across his face before he knew it was coming. Then the kicks started.</p>
<p>Now, Ivan Morozov was no longer here to hurt him. The man was no longer welcome here. This house was never his. It belonged to Katerina Nikiforova. It belonged to Victor Nikiforov, and he intended to prove it.</p>
<p>The figure skater can’t jump quads with weak legs, and the world champion had seen enough action movies to have a good idea of where to kick.</p>
<p>There was something deeply satisfying about the way the wooden frame split as the door flung open. Maybe it was because this was his father’s favorite room. Maybe it was because this was where he experienced the abuse, where he heard his mother’s. Maybe it was just pent-up energy from being off the ice for weeks. Whatever it was, Victor couldn’t help smiling as he pulled the door shut only for it to swing open again, the lock broken.</p>
<p>The room was exactly how he remembered. An old desk with a huge boxy computer, a fish shaped ashtray, and a notebook against one wall. The farthest wall had a boarded up window (though unlike the other windows, Victor remembered that one always being covered). There was a small closet full of stacked documents boxes, then another wall covered by a large map of Russia with lots of pins connected by red strings. While he made a note to tell the police chief about it, what Victor was really interested in was the wall the door was connected to.</p>
<p>There was a time when Ivan was proud of his son, as evident by the number of instant-print photos of him on that wall. There were so many pictures of the silver haired boy, from him smiling as a baby to his first day of school. The virtual timeline seemed to abruptly stop when he was seven. In the last photo, Viktor has a transparent cup of orange juice in his hands as he stands by the door of some business, looking at what appears to be sleigh bells….</p>
<p>
  <em>“Vitya! Come here!” Ivan happily called from the back door of the bar as he lowered the camera. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Viktor looked up from the shiny bells on the brown leather strap. He had been making faces in it, watching how the curved metal distorted his reflection. On some of the bells, his blue eyes looked HUGE, while on the lower ones it was his teeth. There was nothing else for him to do while he waited for his father. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>They stopped by on their way from a candy store that evening. It was their last full day before returning home and his father always made a point of stopping by the store with the pretty violet-striped wallpaper for a box of ribbon candy. The owner was a lady with curly brown hair called Auntie Nadya that would give children a free piece in exchange for paper flowers that she then used to decorate her store. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Ivan brought his son into the bar and left him at a table with his free piece of candy, saying that he needed to talk about “grown up things” with some people, before going out the back door. After a while, he got bored. The nice lady working there gave him the orange juice, then showed him the bells. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Viktor smiled at the bells one more time before he put the cup on the table and walked to his father. He called him! He wanted to include him in an adult talk! Like the big boy he was! Bubbling with excitement, he followed his father out the door. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>There were three men standing around another on his knees. The kneeling man slouched forward with his hands behind his back. Blood dripped from his strangely-bent nose and mouth. There were angry-looking red circles around his eyes. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Dad?” Viktor clung to his father’s jacket sleeve. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Vitya, listen to me,” Ivan said as he pulled his arm out of his son’s grasp as he turned to face him. “That man hurt a friend of ours really bad.” He got down to a knee so they were about eye level. “I know you’re a good boy. That you’re a big boy now. What do you think we should do about him?” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Viktor glanced over at the injured man. He looked pretty hurt already. How much more could he have hurt someone else? “I think that you should treat others the way you should be treated.” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Ivan smiled, standing back up to speak to the other men. “Not even seven yet, and he’s smarter than all of you!” Then he pulled Viktor forward, closer to the kneeling man. He put a heavy black metal object in his son’s small hands. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>A handgun. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Dad?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> “The most important thing about being a Morozov man, Vitya,” Ivan started explaining softly as he crouched down behind his son. He put his hands over the boy’s, moving his finger onto the trigger and steading the gun directly at the kneeling man’s chest. “We are more than just talk.” </em>
</p>
<p>Victor pulled the photo off the wall. He remembered his mother finding him still awake late that night. Of course the little boy who thought grinning at his own reflection on silver bells was fun wouldn’t be able to sleep after that. He cried, trying to explain what happened when he himself didn’t understand.</p>
<p>
  <em>“I have an idea!” His mother said suddenly as her son sniffled in her arms. The cheerful tone in her voice caught his attention. “Let’s go ice skating!” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Ice skating?” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>His mother nodded with a heart-shaped grin. “You’ll love it!” </em>
</p>
<p>That memory made Victor smile. He wished he had a photo of that instead of this one. He would give anything for a photo of him and his mother skating together. There were no videos of his mother skating, only grainy photos from old newspapers but she looked happy. He remembered her being so proud of his skating. That she promised to find him a good coach once things got better. That they would get better. She would make sure of it.</p>
<p>Victor then saw the box on the floor. It was dusty and faded, but he would know that violet-striped box anywhere. He let the photo flutter to the floor as he picked up the box. Balancing the flashlight between his head and shoulder, he used his hand to wipe the thick layer of dust off the top. There was a white label with print so faded it was nearly gone: Nadya’s Ribbon Candy.</p>
<p>He would have tried to do an online search right there if his phone’s data wasn’t so slow. After a whole minute of waiting for something to load, Victor decided to just take the box itself. That would be the easiest option. He knew he wasn’t going to remember the name. Then he felt the weight. He balanced the flashlight between his chin and shoulder as his shaking fingers lifted the lid of the box. He had a feeling he knew what was inside, but still was not ready to have it confirmed.</p>
<p>The first thing he saw was a photo of him that night. This was after…that. The little boy stood alone, staring at the camera in shocked confusion. The gun still in his hands. That same gun sat in the box in a nest of tissue paper flowers.</p>
<p>Just as the song changed, Victor’s phone started ringing in his pocket. An Unknown number. Probably a sponsor trying to drop him without Yakov arguing with them. He put on his most professional voice as he said, “This is Victor Nikiforov.”</p>
<p>“Vitya…it’s me.”</p>
<p>Victor dropped the flashlight, freezing as he stared at the light beam spread on the wall of his childhood photos. He quickly tucked the box under his arm as he cradled the phone with both of his hands, suddenly holding the most precious object in the world at that very moment. Of all the people that could call him, this was the last person he expected. This was the one person he wanted to hear from the most. “Yuuri?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Cliffhanger cause it just felt like a good place to end the chapter.</p>
<p><em>Dream On</em> seemed like a good song for walking up a creaky staircase in the dark while swatting away spiderwebs. Also, Aerosmith.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*offers tissue box* it ends dramatically (ToT)</p>
<p>*for full effect, Yuuri’s theme is <em>Asleep</em> by The Smiths*</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sophia returned to the house with an escort, as usual. Ever since she discovered that Ivan had kidnapped Yuuri Katsuki, she had been kept under constant surveillance by her fiancé and his men. It had become her new normal so fast it was scary. She got used to being followed to the bar. The same men sitting at the same seats watching her. Her every conversation seemingly recorded and reported back to Ivan word-for-word.</p>
<p>She could not get used to what she returned to late every night.</p>
<p>Ever since Ivan discovered that he could make a profit off selling Yuuri’s body, there had not been a quiet night. He claimed that he needed to make ends meet. Men to pay, electricity for the stove and refrigerator, “groceries” (which apparently meant vodka and bullets for his hunting rifle), and saving for their son’s future (“I have no use for a girl,” he had warned more than once). She knew that was not the whole truth.</p>
<p>Ivan wanted to break Yuuri Katsuki and was running out of ideas. The abduction initially didn’t work. The starving hasn’t worked. The beatings and cuttings haven’t worked.</p>
<p>From what she overheard his men saying, it was actually one of their ideas. It started as a joke, “I’d pay you to let me fuck him,” but turned more serious until rubles were handed over they were left in a room with Yuuri. That they soon had him on his hands and knees, taking turns shoving their dicks up his ass, down his throat. Sometimes, they went two at a time, taking him at both ends. Sometimes, they choked him to get him to shut up. That he pleaded “like a bitch” with every breath. That he called for his parents, his coaches, “Vitya.”</p>
<p>Not that they needed to say much. Dimitri, “shit-for-brains” as they called him, shared the video they made online. Last time anyone saw him alive was when Ivan “took him for a walk.” He was found days later dead on a bus in Saint Petersburg of an apparent drug overdose.</p>
<p>Dimitri claimed that he didn’t upload it. That “kobutachan2911” was not him.</p>
<p>Not that it mattered. The video was taken down hours later. “kobutachan2911” was suspended, as was anyone else that tried to upload their downloaded copies of it. There were new uploads under increasingly vague titles popping up and disappearing like a hallucination every day. Apparently, a disgusting number of people wanted to watch Yuuri Katsuki getting sexually assaulted to <em>Eros</em>.</p>
<p>That night, Sophia walked in as a couple of men walked out, pulling the hoods of their jackets over their faces as they excitedly planned their next visit. As they always did. Not out of shame. That would have implied that they felt what they felt wrong for what they did, which they didn’t. If they did, they wouldn’t come back night after night. Instead, they saw themselves as paying costumers receiving a service.</p>
<p>They saw Sophia as a liability if she were somehow to end up in police custody.</p>
<p>She found them in the room, as always. A part of her couldn’t help but to wonder if Yuuri had left that room since he arrived. She doubted it. Besides the wet towelettes she snuck in for him in the pockets of her faded jeans, he hadn’t bathed in weeks. The shredded sweater he wore hung loosely around him. His own pants were long gone, his stained boxers left on the floor near where she left him that morning.</p>
<p>Ivan had him against the wall, one hand around his chin as the other held his favorite just against his throat. The knife cut into the skin over Japanese man’s adam’s apple with every breath. Ivan demanded a number, street address, anything. Promising to end the “nightly visitors” in exchange for information. As always.</p>
<p>And, as always, Yuuri remained silent.</p>
<p>“Vanya, I’m home,” Sophia said, emphasizing the diminutive. She knew it calmed him. She needed calm. Yuuri needed calm. He was barely conscious, supported only by the bruising grip on his chin. It hurt her to see him like that, with those big brown eyes. Pleading for her to run. To save herself and her unborn child.</p>
<p>She didn’t know when Yuuri Katsuki gave up on himself.</p>
<p>“I heard you got a new shipment of whiskey,” Ivan stated casually, as if he didn’t have a knife against someone’s throat. This was business as usual for him, after all. This would have been his Vitya’s life, “if he didn’t fucking talk”. This will be their son’s future. There would be no daughters to plan futures for. He’d make sure of it.</p>
<p>Sophia nodded, resting a hand on her back. It had been a huge order. She knew that Ivan had already been informed of that. She hoped to use that to her advantage. “It was such a big order! Will you come to bed with me, mon amour?”</p>
<p>Ivan released Yuuri, who slid down the wall to crumble on the floor. Not that Ivan cared. He wiped the knife on his dirty jeans, a new stain joining countless other similar ones, as he crossed the room. “Keys?” He took them out of her hand, then went around her to disconnect the rotary phone. Both got locked away every night.</p>
<p>Sophia kneeled down next to Yuuri, helping him sit up to drink the nighttime cup of orange juice. Between sips, she wiped his face with the wipes. Every day, he looked worse. He had grown thinner, paler as his scabs turned an angrier red. The bags under his eyes were deeper. Those brown eyes looked duller. He started running a high fever the day before. “I’ll try to get him to sleep early.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.”</p>
<p>“Don’t thank me,” she said. She felt that didn’t deserve that slight smile that appeared on his scabbed lips. “I wish I could do more.”</p>
<p>“I just need a little time,” was all Yuuri had a chance to say before Ivan called for Sophia.</p>
<p>As soon as the door was closed, Yuuri half crawled half dragged himself to the closet. Ivan stopped tying him and stuffing him in there after the first time…that happened. It was too much work to undo all that. The Russian man simply locked the room door. Sometimes, he didn’t even do that. It wasn’t like Yuuri would get very far even if he got past that door.</p>
<p>That made the closet the perfect hiding spot for the phone.</p>
<p>Despite it being on the lowest brightness setting, the phone was almost dead. Yuuri tried to conserve the battery life by deleting almost everything after uploading that video on a new account. The only icon left on the unlocked device (the passcode was 1-2-3-4) was the Phone app. He guessed that he could probably make one call. He hoped for at least one more, but home could wait. He needed to call someone else first.</p>
<p>“This is Victor Nikiforov.”</p>
<p>Yuuri smiled, holding the phone with both hands. “Vitya…it’s me.”</p>
<p>“Yuuri?”</p>
<p>This time, Yuuri actually chuckled breathlessly. He missed this voice so much. His Victor. Not the professional figure skater that originally answered the phone. The man who spoke his name so gently, as though he was afraid this moment would vanish like a dream. “Hi Vitya.”</p>
<p>“Hi Yuuri.” Victor’s voice shook, and then he could be heard running down creaky stairs through the phone, his feet hitting every step far harder than a world champion figure skater’s feet should. “I’m going to get help. Where are you?”</p>
<p>For a moment, Yuuri forgot that Victor couldn’t see him as he shook his head. He was glad he deleted the FaceTime app. That would have been too tempting, and though he hadn’t seen his own face since this started, Yuuri was sure his appearance was devastate his fiancé. He saw the pain on Sophia’s blurred face every time she looked at him. “Vitya, listen to me. Sit down.”</p>
<p>A step creaked loudly as he complied. “I’m sitting,” Victor said, so much unease creeping into his voice with just those two words.</p>
<p>Yuuri looked up at the dark ceiling, taking a breath. “Vitya, I don’t want you blaming yourself for this. I don’t.” “Yuuri.”</p>
<p>Victor was definitely crying now. “Please don’t-”</p>
<p>“Let me finish.” The Japanese man wiped the tears from his own eyes, amazed that they even formed. “I want you to know that I love you more…more than words could ever say.”</p>
<p>“I love you too.”</p>
<p>“Victor Nikiforov, if I could change anything, I would have married you in Boston. God I wish…I wish I had married you.” Yuuri paused, catching his breath as he heard Victor trying to compose himself on the other end. He wanted to make sure he said this clearly. It was likely his only chance to say these words. “Vitya, ya lyublyu tebya ve-”</p>
<p>
  <strong>.</strong>
</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>
  <strong>.</strong>
</p>
<p>“Yuuri?” After no response came, Victor pulled the phone from his ear. The call had been cut off. Even as the music started playing and the screen changed back to his lockscreen photo of Yuuri in his <em>Stammi Vicino</em> costume, he stared at the phone. He loved this particular picture of Yuuri. It was the night before the Grand Prix Finals Exhibition, during their final dress rehearsal and only run-through with Yakov supervising. He took this photo right before Yuuri released his hand as he stepped onto the ice, with a huge smile as he laughed about something he had forgotten. Not that it mattered. The only thing that mattered to Victor at that moment was that Yuuri was happy.</p>
<p>
  <em>‘Don't try to wake me in the morning</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>'Cause I will be gone’ </em>
</p>
<p>The screen dimmed, then went black as he stared at the phone. Victor soon found himself crying as he sat on the bottom step of his childhood home. Alone, listening to that song in the dark, he crumbled. He hunched forward, sobbing into his own arms. He knew exactly what Yuuri was saying, even if he refused to accept it. It was as if Yuuri himself had picked this particular song to play, to send his message in the event that he couldn’t actually say the words.</p>
<p>
  <em> ‘Don’t feel bad for me</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> I want you to know’ </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>‘Victor woke up on their couch that afternoon to his fiancé’s cool fingers brushing against his forehead as he reached down to gently swipe his sliver bangs out of his face. Yuuri had the sweetest smile as he looked down at him, lost in a happy thought.’ </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>‘Deep in the cell my heart </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I will feel so glad to go’</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>“Vitya, ya lyublyu tebya vechno” = “Vitya, I love you forever.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yes, that is a flashback to Chapter 1 ( labeled Chapter 2: Chapter 1 cause I haven’t figured that out yet) from Victor’s point of view.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>‘Once there was a way </em>
</p><p>
  <em>To get back homeward </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Once there was a way </em>
</p><p>
  <em>To get back home </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sleep pretty darling do not cry </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And I will sing a lullaby’ </em>
</p><p>Victor didn’t even glance up from his phone’s black screen when he saw the beam of light appear before him. Had that much time passed? He didn’t notice, too distracted by his own tears to pay attention to much else. Maybe except to notice that this playlist had a surprising number of sad songs. Or maybe it was just his own mood that made the songs feel far more depressing than they actually were.</p><p>With a sigh, Yakov got down to one knee in front of his skater. He had planned to give Victor a lecture about being out late alone. Especially at a time like this, with one skater already being assaulted who-knows-where. He already warned all of his skaters against going out alone. He thought he made it very clear that they were not to stay out late.</p><p>One look at Victor sobbing almost uncontrollably in the dark changed his mind. “Vitya, what happened?” he asked instead, looking up at him. The man looked as though he had been crying on that step for hours.</p><p>“Yuuri called,” Victor mumbled as fresh tears started. He looked up at the dark ceiling, his breath shaky as he inhaled. “Yuuri called…to say good bye.”</p><p>Another sigh. Yakov pulled himself up onto the step next to Victor to put an arm around his shoulders. He didn’t know what else to do. This was by far the heaviest thing he’d ever had to deal with, and not just as a coach. What can he do for someone who just said good bye to his fiancé?</p><p>“Let’s go. Yura’s waiting for us,” Yakov said, half pulling Victor to his feet as he stood. Then he noticed the box on his other side. “What’s that?” Victor forgot about that box. The box from Nadya’s Ribbon Candy had been under his arm when Yuuri called, and somehow stayed there until he was ordered to sit.</p><p>“It’s…” he wanted to say exactly what it was. A murder weapon. A murder weapon with a child’s finger prints possibly still on it. Finger prints that may or may not match his. Something stopped him though. The very irrational – very Yuuri - thought of what his coach would think of him if he knew. “I found this in his office.”</p><p>“Vitya.”</p><p>Just the tone of that voice told Victor that he wasn’t getting off that easily. “It’s something else he told me not to talk about.”</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em> “Yurio!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The teenager turned and saw Yuuri Katsuki standing in the center of the Ice Castle rink. The only light was the single spot trained on the Japanese skater. On Love: Eros echoed in the background as he performed the program perfectly. Until the first spin. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>First, bits of black fabric and shiny plastic gemstones flew off. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then it was splatters of blood.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> Until Yuuri’s body was laying almost completely still with a tattered sweater around his scarred arms and a rope tightened around his neck as dirty hands pulled him through the ice. </em>
</p><p>Yuri woke up in the front seat of Yakov’s rusty old car. He didn’t mean to fall asleep there, but the car was warm and he was bored waiting for the coach to get Victor out of the house the car was parked in front of. Despite the coffee he managed to drink before leaving Lilia’s house,he still felt exhausted.</p><p>Nights were rough. He couldn’t go online with seeing gifs, screenshots, or copies of that video. Always from new sources that were removed within hours, but still #RealKatsukiEros, #Eros4Real, and #KatsukiAskedForIt were still trending worldwide, along with people actually tagging the Japanese skater. Victor was being tagged in posts asking when their sex tape would drop. That he’d might as share, since his fiancé already shared his “rape fantasy”.</p><p>Some people actually watched the video and thought Yuuri was roleplaying.</p><p>It was disgusting that Yuuri was being hurt who knows where, and people were laughing at the video proof. Saving and sharing screenshots. Photoshopping Victor into it. Photoshopping it onto their ice rink. Making fake theatrical posters for it. Someone even fixed the audio at some point so the On Love: Eros performance video audio was at the same volume as the assaults.</p><p>Yuri barely caught the box as it started to slip off his lap. He looked down at the tiger-striped bento box with the Yu-Topia Katsuki branded sticky note covered with clear packing tape.</p><p>
  <em>‘Have a good day! Don’t forget your figures!</em>
</p><p>
  <em> -Yuuri’ </em>
</p><p>That last morning, Yuuri stopped by the rink to drop off a lunch for him. He always made sure he had a lunch, and he knew that the Japanese skater added more from his own box when he thought he wasn’t looking. Always asked if he had enough to eat and always slipped him a snack between the ice rink and dance studio. Even on his days off, Yuuri made a point of delivering a lunch and snack for him in an insulated lunch bag. This was one of the rare ones where Yuuri left a note. The only one that didn’t end up in the trash can only because it fell into the bag. He found it that night, after Yuuri was taken.</p><p>Yuri had been packing his own lunches in that box almost every day. He missed Yuuri’s lunches, especially when he used the special mold to make tiger-shaped boiled eggs. He missed Yuuri giving him pointers when he thought Yakov wasn’t watching (he apparently had yet to realize that the coach was somehow always watching). He missed working on the barre with Yuuri, Lilia lecturing both of them. He missed the smile that would appear on Yuuri’s face when Victor came to pick him up from the studio (sometimes literally picking him up and carrying him out like his bride, both of them giggling like idiots). He almost missed them in their apartment, being disgustingly cute as they cooked together.</p><p>He almost missed being pulled onto the couch with them during movie nights, with their huge dog laying across all three of them like a warm, fluffy – if a bit smelly - blanket.</p><p>A soft tap on the plastic lid caught his attention. A tear drop. Yuri wiped his eyes with his jacket sleeve. Except it wasn’t his jacket. It was one of Yuuri’s jackets that somehow ended up mixed into his own closet. It was huge, feeling too big for Yuuri even before he lost weight. The dark blue fabric was soft and warm though, and it smelled like their apartment. Victor’s cologne, spices from Yuuri’s cooking, and dog. Still, the teenager slouched in the seat, pulling the neck up to his nose.</p><p>Then there was a tap on the cracked window. “Morning Kid.”</p><p>“Don’t call me kid,” Yuri snapped, already irritated. He didn’t like Officer Alexi Oblonsky. This was the police officer that tried to pull him aside for questioning about Yuuri’s disappearance. Tried. Unfortunately for the man, Yuri had misinterpreted the hand reaching for his shoulder as a threat and proceeded to throw a punch. If it weren’t for Yakov being friends with the police chief, Yuri likely would’ve been charged with assaulting a police officer.</p><p>Yuri didn’t know what it was exactly, but there was something about Officer Oblonsky that he just did not like.</p><p>“What are you doing out here?” The police officer asked, leaning against the car. He had a dark coat over what looked like pajamas.</p><p>“None of your business,” Yuri grumbled in typical teenage fashion. The man was clearly not on duty. Like hell he’d tell him anything willing.</p><p>The man ran a hand through his dyed-black hair as he sighed. “Have you eaten yet? The wife cooks breakfast like she’s feeding an army.”</p><p>Breakfast did sound good. His coach had been in such a hurry to pick up Victor after tracking his phone here that they both forgot to eat. Yuri grabbed his bento box out of habit, forgetting that he didn’t even pack it yet. Also, the idea of eating something warm that wasn’t made by Lilia (therefore might actually taste good) was very tempting.</p><p>Except Yuri couldn’t help but to notice that the off-duty officer had no wedding ring.</p><p>“No thanks. Coach is treating today.” It wasn’t a complete lie. Yakov had to stop to eat at some point. Victor would need to eat. Yuri was sure their coach would end up taking them somewhere for breakfast. Maybe they could stop by that café by the rink with the supposedly healthy pastries. They had a new cat-shaped brownie cake pop he wanted to try.</p><p>The man looked around. “I don’t see him.”</p><p>Yuri waved a hand at the house. “He’s in that creepy-looking dump.”</p><p>“I’m sure your coach would let you grab a cup of coffee?”</p><p>“I don’t drink coffee,” the teenager replied, a lie. Just inside the door, where Oblonsky could not see without actually leaning into the window, Yuri had his phone out. He called his coach after the officer tapped on the window, but didn’t know if he actually answered or not. For all he knew, this whole conversation could end up in the voicemail box.</p><p>“Juice then?”</p><p>“Not interested.” Yuri didn’t like this. Why did he want him to go with him? If he were that worried, why didn’t the officer knock on the house door and talk to his coach? <em>‘Hurry up!’ </em></p><p>Then the call ended and, as if he heard Yuri’s thought, Yakov walked out the door. The moment the coach’s eyes fell on the officer, his expression went from weary to pissed. He practically marched down the path to the car and stopped in front of him, shoulders squared and murder in his eyes. “I understand Chief Sidorov gave you orders to leave my skater alone.”</p><p>“I live across the street. I thought he’d like a coffee while he waited for you and Mr. Nikiforov.”</p><p>Coach Feltsman caught a look on his young skater’s face. “He doesn’t drink coffee.”</p><p>“Ah. Well, have a good day, then!” The officer said before walking back across the street. His house looked like any other house on the street from the outside, except, of course, for the police cruiser in the driveway. Inside looked barely lived in. There was barely any furniture in the living room, just a chair and a small table pulled up to the blinds-covered window. On the table was a pair of binoculars and a phone.</p><p>And a tiny gold band with half a snow flake engraved inside.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>(._.) </p><p>Whenever I’m stressed, I tend to turn to classic rock (though if I’m stressed enough it’s literal hours of bagpipes). <em>Golden Slumbers</em> is one of my favorite Beatles songs.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I almost forgot this week's update. (^_^;) I have a super playful kitten at home who constantly demands my  attention.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Vanya, my love, please,” Sophia pleaded from across the table. She barely touched her breakfast. She couldn’t. Between her morning sickness and witnessing Yuuri Katsuki’s worsening condition, she had no appetite. “He needs medicine.”</p>
<p>“He needs to give me information,” Ivan stated. Unlike his fiancée, he had no trouble eating his serving of buttered rye bread, sausage, and scrambled eggs. He didn’t even slice his sausage. Instead, he simply stabbed it with his fork and bit.</p>
<p>Sophia watched as he finished his plate, still poking her neatly sliced sausage. The smell alone was upsetting her stomach. Usually, she ate a granola bar from the box in the backroom when she got to her bar, spending the time she would have spent eating at home trying to help Yuuri.</p>
<p>That morning, Yuuri was barely conscious enough to drink the watered down orange juice she brought him. His fever was even worse. He kept asking her to speak up, to talk slower. His own responses to her usual questions were delayed, as though he really had to think of his own full name and birthdate. She knew she was losing him.</p>
<p>So, Sophia decided to make breakfast for Ivan. She needed to get on his good side. She was trying her best. She let him take her car keys every night. She didn’t comment about being watched nearly all the time. She even gave him blow jobs every night after she got back from the bar. She hoped all that would push him into granting her one request. Apparently not. “Vanya, he will die before he talks.”</p>
<p>“Then let him. I already have eyes on Plisetsky.”</p>
<p>“Yuri Plisetsky is a child!” Sophia stared at Ivan, shocked by his reaction to that statement. Rather, lack of reaction. He clearly did not care that Yuri was a minor. Even if he did win gold in the seniors division in Grand Prix Finals, he was still a child.</p>
<p>Still, nothing. Ivan just grabbed another slice of the dark bread and started spreading butter on it.</p>
<p>Sophia took a breath. “If you even touch that boy, I will make sure you never see my child.” Ivan paused in the middle of buttering the bread.</p>
<p>Then, he laughed at her. “Do you think there is a place in this world where you can hide my son?”</p>
<p>“I’ll kill myself then, if that is what it takes keeps my child safe from you.”</p>
<p>“Do you think I’d let you?” Ivan asked, his grey eyes narrowing at her.</p>
<p>“I made this entire meal without you knowing.” Sure, it was a small meal, quick and easy to make. That was not the point. Her point was that she did it without being watched. She found a block of time when he didn’t have eyes on her. She handled a knife without being watched. If she timed it right, she knew she could stab herself and bleed out before Ivan knew.</p>
<p>“Then I just have to make sure you always have company.”</p><hr/>
<p>They sat on the old couch in Yakov’s office. Rather, Yuri sat in the corner with a mocha in one hand as he texted Otabek with his other, cake pop stick still in his mouth. The rest of the couch was occupied by a curled up Victor Nikiforov, who had fallen asleep almost as soon as he saw it. It had always been his favorite place to nap, after all. If he wasn’t on the ice, the Living Legend was almost always found napping there. Even when he was in Japan for months, the worn dark green fabric still smelled like his cologne and sweat as though he'd just left the seat.</p>
<p>Yuri could hear their couch and the police chief just out in the hall, talking to someone else on speakerphone. For whatever reason, Yakov had called his friend to meet them at the rink then cancelled all training for the day in the group chat. It sounded serious, but they spoke too quietly for Yuri to pick up much more than the tone of their voices. And something about a box.</p>
<p>The box likely in question sat on the desk next to Victor’s extra-caffeinated mocha and untouched blueberry muffin. What was the big deal? It was a dusty box from some small candy store. Probably closed by now. Frankly, Yuri was surprised it was not a spider’s home, how long it was left alone in that likely infested house. He already swatted two spiders off Victor’s jacket since he fell asleep. He didn’t want to know how many more were hidden in the man’s clothes and hair.</p>
<p>For a moment, Yuri hesitated as he stood over the violet-striped box. Victor didn’t even move when the teenager stood up. The other two men were too deep in their conversation to notice. He took a deep breath, then pulled off the lid and saw the gun. “Holy fuck. WHAT THE FUCK VICTOR?”</p>
<p>“Hmm?”</p>
<p>Yuri turned to the slowly awakening man. He pointed at the still-open box. “Why is there a glock in a box?”</p>
<p>Victor sat up with a yawn, then tilted his head to the side in a very Makkachin-like fashion as he tried to blink his sleepiness away. “Yuri, how do you know what kind of gun that is?”</p>
<p>The teenager looked away from Victor, hoping he wasn’t blushing as hard as he felt he was. “I write fan fictions, alright?” And that was all he was saying about that. Victor didn’t need to know about his fan fictions. He didn’t want him to know about the characters he obviously based on him and his fiancé.</p>
<p>Their coach pushed the door opened and tossed a bag of red and white clothes toward Victor. “Yura, Lilia is on her way to pick you up. Vitya, eat your food and take a shower. Vlad found Nadya’s. We’re leaving in thirty.”</p>
<p>“What?” They both shouted, Yuri in protest and Victor in sleepy confusion.</p>
<p>“I’m not repeating myself, and I’m not arguing with you, Yuri.” With that, Yakov left them, closing the door behind himself. End of discussion.</p>
<p>Yuri threw himself on the couch again, slouching with his arms folded across his chest. “Why do I have to stay behind?”</p>
<p>Instead of saying anything, Victor leaned over and wrapped his arms around his young rink mate. He knew Yuri wouldn’t listen to him pointing out that he was too young. That it was too dangerous for them to risk him. So, he just held him. He didn’t expect Yuri’s arms to wrap around him, or that face to bury itself in his dusty jacket. “I’ll let you know if-”</p>
<p>“Just get Katsudon back so I can beat both of you.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <strong>*(TOT)/~~~ WARNING: first scene has both rape and violence. It ends at the line break*</strong>
</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His bleeding arms shook under him, straining to support his weight as his body was rocked back and forth. His already blurred vision seemed even foggier, with black filling in the edges. Everything sounded so quiet, so far away. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this tired, this weak. He just wanted to lay down and go back to sleep.</p><p>Every time his arms started to give out, the rope around his neck tightened. Without caring for his already bruised throat, those men used either that rough rope or his own matted black hair to pull him up, to keep him up. They shoved their cocks into him, laughing at his discomfort. Sometimes, they went two at a time, one thrusting from each end. Sometimes, they choked him while someone was already down his throat.</p><p>His own performance of On Love: Eros played loudly the every time, ruining all of Yuuri’s memories of that program.</p><p>Some nights, it was more than that. Some had brought knives, slicing into his skin and cutting locks of hair as souvenirs. Hot wax had been dripped on his already injured skin. Belts had been slapped across his back. The necks of empty glass bottles had been shoved up his ass when they decided they needed a break. They enjoyed watching him squirm under their control. They took great pleasure in abusing him until he collapsed.</p><p>Yuuri just wanted to left alone to sleep. To escape all of this for a few peaceful moments. Sometimes, he didn’t want to come back.</p>
<hr/><p>The candy store was almost exactly how Victor remembered. The violet-striped wallpaper had been replaced with actual paint, though still almost the exact same stripes. There were still what seemed like thousands of paper flowers on the shelves between the collection of matryoshka dolls. A fountain soda machine had been installed and some little white tables had been added to the space. The display case had several different flavors of brightly colored ribbon candy, alone with chocolates and macarons.</p><p>Much to his surprise, there was a special edition strawberry-matcha ribbon candy called “Victuuri”. The little name card had a tiny skate in each of the bottom corners, modeled after his and Yuuri’s.</p><p>The little bell on the counter top had to be new. There was no way Auntie Nadya kept the same bell that shiny after twenty years. It sounded the same though. If the clattering dishes were anything to go buy, she reacted exactly how he remembered as well.</p><p>“I’m coming!” an older woman shouted as she walked through the curtained doorway. Besides the weight gain and the grey hair, she looked exactly as Victor remembered. She smiled the same when she saw him, quickly going around the counter to hug him. “Vitya! You have grown so much!” She held him tighter for a moment. “We’ve heard what happened with your Yuuri. We’re praying for him to be found.”</p><p>“Thank you,” was all Victor could think to say. They were a step closer. They were in the right town, he hoped. He left his coach and the Saint Petersburg police chief at the local station to go for a walk after the long drive, not planning on finding Nadya’s Ribbon Candy, now just Auntie Nadya’s.</p><p>Then he saw an instant print photo on the wall behind the counter. “Is that…?”</p><p>Nadya followed the skater’s gaze to the photo. She released him to back around the counter. She carefully unpinned the old photo. For a moment, her smile softened as she looked at it one more time before giving it to Victor. “Your mom would want you to have that.”</p><p>[Image: little Viktor skating with Katerina at an outdoor rink under a pink and violet morning sky. They hold each other’s gloved hand as they look at each other, sharing the same heart-shaped grin]</p><p>“Kat was so excited when she gave me that,” Nadya reminisced as she pulled on some plastic gloves. She grabbed a tissue paper then reached into the case for a Victuuri ribbon candy, which she gave Victor. “I couldn’t believe how happy she was. She ran in here like a child on Christmas morning! “You should have seen my Vitya!” she told me with that grin she had. She was so proud of you. “He’s going to be one of the greatest figure skaters of all time! Just watch!”.” Then, the older lady sighed. “That was the last time I saw her before….”</p><p>They stood in silence. Victor stared at the photo in his hands. His mother looked so happy and carefree in this photo. For all he knew, this could have been the happiest moment of her life. Out there in the cold, wearing her old figure skates for the first time in years as she guided her son on his first steps on the ice. Sharing her passion with her only living child. Not knowing how much that one decision would change their lives.</p><p>“She would have been proud of the man you are today.”</p><p>Victor wiped a tear from his eyes with the back of his other hand, still holding the candy. He had forgotten about it. “Can I still pay with a flower?”</p><p>Nadya laughed at the suggestion. “Vitya dear, your flowers were always the worst.”</p><p>“But you took them?”</p><p>She leaned against the counter, resting her chin on her hand. “You were so cute when you tried.” She then pulled one out from the drawer. “This is probably your best flower. I gave it to Kat the last time but your mom was always so forgetful!”</p><p>It was far from the perfectly folded flowers that had been appearing in Victor’s life recently. This one was uneven, with one petal looking almost square and another unfolding. It was decorated with tiny smiley face stickers There was smudged writing on another petal. “Can I see that?”</p><p>Nadya placed the flower on the counter, just as a timer in the back went off. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said before going back through the curtain.</p><p>Victor put the candy on the counter on top of the tissue paper so he could pick up the paper flower. He remembered making this one. It was the same day he went fishing with his father for the last time. There was a new flavor of ribbon candy he wanted to try, but the only piece of paper he had was the one his mother insisted he kept in the zippered pocket inside his jacket. In case he wandered and got lost, she had told him more than once.</p><p>If he got lost, at least he could the cabin.</p><p>“Who is this?” Ivan demanded on the other end of the call.</p><p>Victor could hear everything that happened in the background. Other men laughed. A video of On Love: Eros played loudly somewhere. Someone’s pain-filled scream cut off, muffled. Yuuri. Victor had to take a deep breath to keep himself from crying right then and there. “This is Victor.”</p><p>“Vitya! How nice of you to call,” Ivan said casually. “I hear you’re at Nadya’s. That bar is down the road on the left. I’ll see you there.”</p><p>The call ended.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>(ToT) the beginning of this chapter…I really question how I went from writing fluff to <em>this</em> sometimes….</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sophia nearly dropped her little red bucket of sanitizer water when he walked through the door. If it weren’t for the red and white track suit under dark blue jacket, she would have thought he was a younger Ivan at first glance. He could almost pass as her fiancé. This man was not as pale as her fiancé. His silver hair was much shorter and neater than she’d ever seen Ivan’s. It took her a few seconds to realize that this was Victor Nikiforov. In her bar. Where her crazy fiancé had men watching.</p><p>Oblivious to the horror on the bartender’s face, Victor sat on a bar stool, put a plastic bag from Nadya’s on the stool next to him, and asked, “Do you have any juice?”</p><p>“Juice?” Sophia asked. If she was not so concerned about the fact that this was the man her fiancé had been torturing someone to find, she may have laughed. Russia’s Living Legend just walked into her bar with a bag from the local candy store and asked for juice. There was a whole mirrored wall behind her covered in various types of alcohol, from vodka to whiskey to tequila, and he asked for juice.</p><p>“I’ll take water if you don’t.”</p><p>Sophia didn’t realize she didn’t answer yet. “Ah, yes. Is orange juice alright?”</p><p>Victor nodded, looking at the door. The sleigh bells were still there, the brown leather they were sewn into looking crackled and dirtier than he remembered. The bells themselves were dull, scratched. He doubt he’d see his reflection in them anymore.</p><p>As she placed the glass on the counter, Sophia took the opportunity to lean forward. “You need to get out of here. He’ll know you’re here.”</p><p>“I know. I’m waiting for him,” Victor replied with a smile. “Thank you for your concern.”</p><p>The bar was quiet. The usual watchers kept their places at the tables, at the ends of the bar. Victor sipped his juice, glancing at the door every so often. After wiping the entire counter, twice, and getting herself a glass of orange juice, she stood in front of the figure skater again. “Meet me out back in five. I can take you to-”</p><p>The bells rang as the door flung open. Ivan Morozov walked in, his footsteps so heavy they could almost be felt. He stopped behind Victor. The older man smelled like cigarettes, alcohol, and sweat. He smirked as he looked down at his son for the first time since the day of his sentencing, nearly two decades before. “Hello, Vitya.”</p><p>“Don’t call me Vitya.” Victor nearly growled the first word. He hated how that sounded in that man’s voice. It was too soft, too tender. It reminded him too much of the good days, before Ivan ever raised a hand against him. When he thought the safest place in the world was by his father’s side.</p><p>“I’ll call you whatever I fucking want, Vitya,” Ivan stated plainly, though emphasizing the diminutive. He then grabbed Victor’s shoulder to turn him. “And you will look at me when I’m talking to you!”</p><p>Victor shook the hand off his shoulder as he stood, his stool clattering loudly to the floor. They were almost the same height. They probably would have been exactly eye-to-eye if the older man had Victor’s perfect dancer’s posture.</p><p>Ivan scoffed at the Olympic jacket. “You are a disgrace to the Morozov-”</p><p>“My name is Nikiforov.”</p><p>“You are my son. Call yourself what you want; you’re still a Morozov,” Ivan stated. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in the skater’s face, ignoring the resulting coughs. “You still have Morozov blood.”</p><p>“Where’s Yuuri?”</p><p>Ivan took the shots of vodka his fiancée brought him. He placed one in front of Victor before drinking his own. He watched his son. “Drink.” Victor picked up the shot glass and, not breaking eye contact with Ivan, poured it out onto the floor.</p><p>He caught the hand that was meant to smack him by the wrist. “Where is Yuuri?”</p><p>The older man pulled his hand back. “I’ll tell you where your stubborn ass bitch is, after you tell me why you sold me out.”</p><p>“I what?”</p><p>“How did the cops find the house, hm?” Ivan asked. He pressed his spent cigarette butt into the ashtray. He drank the next shot, then lit another cigarette. “Did they give you a good reward? Is that how you paid to keep the house? How you kept your son of a bitch coach?”</p><p>Confused, Victor slowly shook his head. He still couldn’t remember the house address. He knew how to get there from the Sport Champions Center based almost entirely on various landmarks. The playground with the still-crooked slide. The tree over the now moss-covered cat memorial. The blue mailbox with the orange tag that was still always left wide open after the old lady checked it every afternoon. He never needed to know the address.</p><p>Before he could say this though, the doors on either side of the building flung open as police officers poured in, guns drawn. They started leading people out. Police Chief Sidorov didn’t hesitate to walk up to them. “Ivan Morozov, hands above your head!”</p><p>Ivan smirked, noticing Victor reaching back. He had wondered why his son had been wearing two jackets. He had assumed it was to hide the loud red and white Team Russia jacket. He knew that movement though. Even without the name, Victor still had Morozov blood in him and definitely had a gun in his waistband under those jackets. As he was handcuffed, Ivan looked Victor straight in the eyes and said, “Blood is blood, Vitya.”</p><p>Soon, Ivan was shoved into the back of a police cruiser. At first, he was annoyed. His first conversation with his son in over twenty years had been cut short by the cops. He had so much to say still. He wanted answers. Who knows? Maybe if his Victor actually cooperated, he would have taken him back to the house to see his fiancé before the man died. He wasn’t completely heartless. It wasn’t his fault that it took so long for Victor to find his way to him. It wasn’t his fault if Yuuri Katsuki died alone because they arrested him before he brought Victor to him.</p><p>Then he took a good look at the driver. “I think it’s time I visited the main house.”</p><p>
  <em>Yuuri stood on the beach in Hasetsu. He wrapped his arms around himself, feeling the soft sleeves of the knit sweater. He had worn Victor’s sweater to seduce him into bed with him. Where was Victor? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In front of him, Yuuri watched as Makkachin and Vicchan played in the water. The two poodles jumped in the waves and on top of each other. They looked so happy, splashing around like that. The water had to be below freezing though. Yuuri shivered where he stood on the dry sand. “Vicchan! Makkachin! Let’s go!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Instead of listening, the two brown poodles started swimming out into deeper water. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“No! This way!” Yuuri shouted, patting the side of his leg. After that didn’t work, he started walking down to the water. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yuuri!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yuuri turned and was suddenly falling through…nothing. </em>
</p><p>Then Yuuri awoke with a jolt on the floor in that room, as always. He couldn’t remember the last time he woke up alone though. Usually it was either that lady with the juice coaxing him to drink and asking questions, or them. He wanted to stay awake this time, to enjoy the quiet of being alone for once, but he just didn’t have the energy. Everything in him told him to close his eyes. To go back to sleep.</p><p>To let go.</p><p>“YUURI!”</p><p>That voice sounded so far away. It had to be. There was no way Victor was here. He couldn’t be here! Those people, that man, would hurt his Victor if they found him here! Yet, when the door opened, it was his Victor that ran in, wearing his brightly colored Olympic track suit. That fell to his knees next to him and scooped him up into his arms, pulled him onto his lap. “Vitya?”</p><p>“I’m here, Yuuri!” Victor said, crying tears of joy. His Yuuri! They found him! Alive! He kissed the top of his fiancé’s head, noticing the unusual warmth, but ignoring it for the moment. They could worry about that when the ambulance caught up. For now, he just wanted to hold Yuuri.</p><p>“Hi Vitya,” Yuuri murmured as he rested his head against his chest. Victor was so warm. His heart was so soft against his ear, it’s steady beating calming him. The jacket was so soft against his skin. He closed his eyes as he smiled, breathing in the scents he could only describe as his Victor. Clean ice and fresh flowers. Their colognes mixed with his sweat. This moment was perfect, even as he felt everything start to fade away around him. <em>‘Vitya, I’m so sorry.’ </em></p><p>Victor kissed Yuuri’s head again, smiling when he felt him deeply sigh against his chest, cradled in his arms. Safe. Alive. The ambulance should be there soon to take him to the hospital. Yuuri would get better. They would get through this, together. Then Victor looked down at Yuuri and his smile slipped away.</p><p>
  <strong> . </strong>
</p><p>.</p><p>
  <strong>. </strong>
</p><p>Yuuri wasn’t breathing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Truthfully, that last scene was one of the first ones I had planned but still (ToT)</p><p>I know that this was not the huge Victor vs. Ivan meeting you all were expecting. I thought about making it more substantial, but then time and place, my dear readers. A tiny bar in the middle of nowhere is not where I want the final confrontation to happen. Not when I can make it even more dramatic later (^_-). Besides, I need some room for part two (I hope you didn't think the entire series was this and a one shot. I bought a new tissue box for a reason.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 17 - Last Chapter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So originally, I planned to not have an opening note because I was cruel enough to leave you all with <em><strong>that</strong></em> cliffhanger and thought that you’d just want to dive right in. And then Big Mac (my computer) crashed last Friday and <strong>I HAD TO ERASE THE ENTIRE DRIVE</strong> to get it working again. I had to erase the entire drive to actually do anything with it. So if it feels a little off or rushed, sorry.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Yuuri stood in the middle of a seemingly endless expanse of ice. Above him, the northern lights danced against the dark sky as Yuri On Ice played softly from all around him. When he focused his eyes on the curtain-like lights, he realized that the colors were actually images. Every moment of his life was being played back like a movie. He watched his life unfold from his birth to that afternoon in the apartment, his fingers brushing the silver hair off of Victor’s face. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Is this what death is like? Yuuri was sure of it. All of the aches and pain he knew he had been feeling moments ago were gone, faded away. The guilt was still there, though. He had regrets. He wished he called home more often. He wished he thanked his coaches for everything they had done for him. He wished he had taken more selfies with Phichit. Had gone out more with Mila, Georgi, and Yuri. He wished he had cooked at home more, made more katsudon and miso soup. He wished he spent more time with Makkachin. Yuuri wished he had told Victor every moment he had that he loved him. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Yuri On Ice slowly faded to Stammi Vicino, the air starting to smell like the powdery almond cookies Victor sometimes baked on their rest days. Yuuri turned at the familiar sound of skates landing on the ice after a successful jump, ignoring the sight of the buring paper flowers sending glowing embers up to join the northern lights above. He expected to see his fiancé there, and indeed the person skating did resemble him. Tall and slender, with long light hair in a ponytail that reminded Yuuri so much of teenage Victor Nikiforov. Then he saw the short white dress and worn white skates and somehow knew exactly who it was.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> How nice of Victor’s mother to come for him. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>After landing a quad flip nearly as clean as her son’s, Katerina Nikiforova stopped in front of Yuuri. She stood for a moment with a finger on her lip. Then her face lit up with that mysterious heart-shaped grin, so much like Victor, as she held out her faintly glowing hand. “Vitya is waiting for you, Yuuri.” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>With a slightly trembling hand, Yuuri reached out…. </em>
</p>
<p>Victor leaned against the railing of the hospital bed, watching. Thanking whoever cared for every breath Yuuri took. Even if it was with the help of a ventilator. At least he no longer needed the impossibly large looking tube going down his throat anymore. At least he had been steadily improving for a whole week.</p>
<p>That first month after they found him were the worst. Yuuri’s condition had been touch and go for nearly two weeks straight. Victor barely left his bedside and had to literally be dragged out by his coach for quick meals in the cafeteria. Even after his condition stabilized, Victor was there every day, sometimes for the entire day if he had no practice.</p>
<p>Victor learned to read the machines and charts. He learned everything there was to know about every medication prescribed to his fiancé. Victor read Yuuri’s fanmail and the messages sent from his family and friends to him, hoping that the nurses were right and that he could hear him. That he felt when Victor kissed his scarred fingers. Every night, Victor spent some time just staring at Yuuri, memorizing everything about his fiancé in case he took another turn for the worst and did not come back.</p>
<p>At first, he thought he imagined it. He had just come after training with Yakov for most of the day. All of the sounds were so rhythmic that they caused Victor to doze off embarrassingly often. Then, Victor watched in amazement as Yuuri’s fingers slowly tightened around his….</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Broken Hourglass coming soon...ish... (^_^;)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-EnigmaOfShipwreckIsland</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was supposed to be a fluffy one shot. I wanted a fluffy one shot. It wrote itself into this mess.</p><p>Please leave kudos and comments!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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